January, 2022.
Craig has started developing a lexicon and grammar for Gichuka, a Bantu language spoken in central Kenya. He meets online regularly with a Gichuka speaker named Anthony Muthomi, who is a member of BTLKenya (btlkenya.org). Gichuka is a fairly agglutinative language, with lots of morphology on the verb for tense, aspect, and valency-adjustment. It also has the classic noun classes of Bantu languages, which affects agreement on adjectives, verbs, and even prepositions.
Two simple sentences in English and Gichuka are shown below so that you can see what an agglutinative language is like. In an agglutinative language, ideas that are separate words in English are often prefixes or suffixes that attach to the verb. In the second sentence below, English uses five words, but the Gichuka sentence has only one word.
John saw a chair. Then he sat on it.
Njũana nĩonire gĩtĩ. Akĩnagĩkarĩra.
John saw a chair.
Njũana nĩ-(a)-on-ire gĩtĩ.
John past-3SG-see-perfective chair.SG.
Then he sat on it.
A-kĩna-g-ĩkar-ĩra.
3SG-then-it-sit-applicative
Gichuka is a fairly agglutinative language, with lots of morphology on the verb for tense, aspect, and valency-adjustment.
All of these prefixes and suffixes are based on rules, so Craig is writing rules to make TBTA produce accurate and high quality translations in this agglutinative language.