An interesting question we received from a client is how you would implement splitting up an article and a concept label in Dutch, while making sure the right article (“de” or “het”) is being used.
This situation arises when an adjective is inserted between an article and a concept label , e.g.: “de huidige klasse”.
“de klasse” would typically be written as #klasse in ClauseBase grammar. If we now insert an adjective between the article “de” and the noun itself “klasse” we would typically write de huidige #-klasse to make sure the concept label drops its article.
This works fine in most cases. However, in case another concept label for the same concept has a neutral gender (e.g. “het level”), the above solution becomes problematic. “De” will not adapt automatically to “het”. Furthermore, ClauseBase’s grammatical intelligence does not support this type of variation in Dutch articles.
The solution here is to use the special function @is-neutral as follows: {@is-neutral(#klasse): het huidige #-klasse | else: de huidige #-klasse}. This way, ClauseBase will display the right text (and therefore article) when the concept label of the concept #klasse is neutral, instead of male or female.