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Non-canonical Inflection: Data, Formalisation and Complexity Measures

  • Conference paper
Systems and Frameworks for Computational Morphology (SFCM 2011)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 100))

Abstract

Non-canonical inflection (suppletion, deponency, heteroclisis, etc.) is extensively studied in theoretical approaches to morphology. However, these studies often lack practical implementations associated with large-scale lexica. Yet these are precisely the requirements for objective comparative studies on the complexity of morphological descriptions. We show how a model of inflectional morphology which can represent many non-canonical phenomena [67], as well as a formalisation and an implementation thereof can be used to evaluate the complexity of competing morphological descriptions. After illustrating the properties of the model with data about French, Latin, Italian, Persian and Sorani Kurdish verbs and about noun classes from Croatian and Slovak we expose experiments conducted on the complexity of four competing descriptions of French verbal inflection. The complexity is evaluated using the information-theoretic concept of description length. We show that the new concepts introduced in the model by [67] enable reducing the complexity of morphological descriptions w.r.t. both traditional or more recent models.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ALPAGE, INRIA Paris–Rocquencourt & Université, Paris 7, France

    Benoît Sagot

  2. LLF, UMR 7110, Univ. Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 75013, Paris, France

    Géraldine Walther

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  1. Benoît Sagot
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  2. Géraldine Walther
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Basel, Nadelberg 4, 4051, Basel, Switzerland

    Cerstin Mahlow

  2. University of Zurich, Binzmülestr. 14, Zurich, Switzerland

    Michael Piotrowski

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Sagot, B., Walther, G. (2011). Non-canonical Inflection: Data, Formalisation and Complexity Measures. In: Mahlow, C., Piotrowski, M. (eds) Systems and Frameworks for Computational Morphology. SFCM 2011. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 100. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23138-4_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23138-4_3

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