Department of Computer Science and Technology

Technical reports

Computational morphology of English

S.G. Pulman, G.J. Russell, G.D. Ritchie, A.W. Black

January 1989, 15 pages

DOI: 10.48456/tr-155

Abstract

This paper describes an implemented computer program which uses various kinds of linguistic knowledge to analyse existing or novel word forms in terms of their components. Three main types of knowledge are required (for English): knowledge about spelling or phonological changes consequent upon affixation (notice we are only dealing with isolated word forms); knowledge about the syntactic or semantic properties of affixation (i.e. inflexional and derivational morphology), and knowledge about the properties of the stored base forms of words (which in our case are always themselves words, rather than more abstract entities). These three types of information are stored as data files, represented in exactly the form a linguist might employ. These data files are then compiled by the system to produce a run-time program which will analyse arbitrary word forms presented to it in a way consistent with the original linguistic description.

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BibTeX record

@TechReport{UCAM-CL-TR-155,
  author =	 {Pulman, S.G. and Russell, G.J. and Ritchie, G.D. and Black,
          	  A.W.},
  title = 	 {{Computational morphology of English}},
  year = 	 1989,
  month = 	 jan,
  url = 	 {https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-155.pdf},
  institution =  {University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory},
  doi = 	 {10.48456/tr-155},
  number = 	 {UCAM-CL-TR-155}
}