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Testing the changes that have been made
Now with the changed grammar we can go back and see if this makes any difference to our generated ‘sentences’. We can‘Quit’ from the system editor, then from the system network graph, and go back to the Development window. Then we select Traverse Grammar as before. This time we see that, indeed, there is only one result: ‘Mr. Smith’ as desired.
If you also get this result, it means that you have successfully changed the grammar to be more like a grammar of addressing people in English (and German) rather than Japanese. Well done! If something else happens, then the changes that we needed have not been added correctly to the grammar. Testing generation is a very strong way of making absolutely sure that our grammar really says what we think it says!
Having done this, we can turn to other areas of the grammar fragment and see if these are also sufficient.
What happens, for example, if we select ‘female’ instead of ‘male’? The following windows show the result generated, and the path through the grammar (which we obtain by selecting Inspect>Graph Region as described before).
The program generates "<No Realization> Smith", which is close to what we might expect in that it at least got the ordering of a Title and the name correct, but the particular choice of title appears lacking.
So the problem now is how to fix this. If we wish to generate, for example, both ‘Mrs. Smith’ and ‘Miss Smith’, what needs to be added?
Can you work this out without further help?
HINT: Look very carefully at the network first of all and work out what would be a good solution. Then, and only then, go on with the programme to see if you can make the necessary changes to put your network into the grammar.
The programme already knows about the 'words' Miss and Mrs in exactly an analogous way to its knowing about Mr.