Inflectional paradigms

Revision as of 15:13, 13 August 2013

Inflectional paradigms are sets of rules used to generate the inflected forms out of the base form.

When to use inflectional paradigms

Inflectional paradigms are used when:

• inflections can be described by AFFIXATION (i.e., prefixation, infixation or suffixation) AND
• inflections are REGULAR (i.e., they may be applied to several different words)

Consider, for instance, the case of the English nouns making the plural in -s (book>books, table>tables, etc.). This can be expressed by affixation (suffixation of -s) and it is regular (there are many words in this set). This morphological behavior is then described by the paradigm M2, which contains two rules:

• SNG:=0>""; (do not add anything to the word in case of singular)
• PLR:=0>"s"; (add "s" to the end of the word in case of plural)

This paradigm is created within the English grammar and is associated, in the English dictionary, to all words having the same morphological behavior.
In the grammar:

• Paradigm M2: SNG:=0>""; PLR:=0>"s";

In the dictionary:

• [table]{ID}"UW"(LEX=N,POS=NOU,...,PAR=M2)<eng,0,0>;
• [book]{ID}"UW"(LEX=N,POS=NOU,...,PAR=M2)<eng,0,0>;
• ...

When not to use inflectional paradigms

Inflectional paradigms are not used in the following cases:

• When the word is NOT INFLECTIONAL (such as adverbs, in English); OR
• When the inflections are NOT REGULAR, i.e., when they are too specific (such as mouse>mice, in English); OR
• When the inflections CANNOT BE EXPRESSED BY AFFIXATION, i.e., when inflections are represented by periphrases (such as future, in English: go > will go)

Consider, for instance, the cases below:

• The English adverb "now"

  The adverb "now" is not inflectional (i.e., it does not change its form according to number, gender, tense, aspect, etc.) and, therefore, must be associated to the paradigm M0 (INVARIANT)

• The English noun "mouse"

  The noun "mouse" is inflectional (i.e., it changes its form in singular and plural), which can be expressed by two suffixation rules:

  SNG:=0>""; (do not add anything to the word in case of singular)

  PLR:="mice"; (replace everything by "mice" in case of plural)

  These rules, however, are very specific and, therefore, should not be defined as a paradigm in the grammar, but as inflectional rules inside the dictionary:
  

  In the grammar:
  

  • Paradigm M1 (IRREGULAR), i.e., the inflectional rules are defined inside the dictionary because they are too specific

  In the dictionary:

  • [mouse]{ID}"UW"(LEX=N,POS=NOU,...,PAR=M1,FLX(SNG:=0>"";PLR:="mice";))<eng,0,0>;

• The English verb "love"

  The verb "love" is inflectional (i.e., it changes its form in the present, past, future, etc), and these changes can be expressed by several suffixation rules:

  • INF:=0>""; (do not add anything to the word in case of infinitive)
  • PAS:=0>"d"; (add "d" to the word in case of past tense)
  • 3PS&PRS&IND:=0>"s"; (add "s" to the word in case of third person singular present indicative)
  • GER:=1>"ing"; (remove the last character and add "ing" in case of gerund)

  ...

  Note, however, that some inflections of the verb cannot be generated by affixation, such as the future (love>will love), the present progressive (love>is loving), the present perfect (love>has loved), etc. In these cases, the inflection is not simply a matter of appending strings to the end of the word. Note, for instance, that the negation comes in-between: "will not love", "is not loving", "has not loved"; and that the order may be changed in interrogatives: "will he/Peter/the boy with the telescope love?". So, we cannot define these inflections as mere affixes, but as a whole new syntactic structures. These inflections, thus, are not included inside paradigms, and must be defined in a different way. Paradigms must only include SIMPLE FORMS (the paradigm for English verbs contain only simple tenses, for instance).

Predefined Paradigms

There are two predefined paradigms in the UNL^arium:

INVARIANT (M0)

If the word is not inflectional (case of adverbs in English, for instance) or does not accept any inflectional variant (case of "clothes", used only in plural, or "species", that has the same form in singular and plural).

IRREGULAR (M1)

If the word is inflectional but does not follow any existing paradigm, as in irregular forms (such as "man", "mouse", "foot" and "child"). In this case, the corresponding inflectional rules should be provided as inflectional rules.

How to create inflectional paradigms

How to create inflectional paradigms

Syntax

Inflectional paradigms and inflectional rules are expressed by A-rules, a special formalism for introducing prefixes, infixes and suffixes to the base form.

Examples