Inflectional paradigms

Revision as of 14:49, 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 case of non-inflectional words (such as adverbs). Inflectional paradigms are also avoided in case of irregular behavior, which is described by inflectional rules.
For instance, the morphological behavior of "mouse", in English, can be defined by the two rules below:

• 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>;

What is to be included inside an inflectional paradigm

Inflectional paradigms must include only affixes (prefixes, infixes or suffixes) to the base form. Compound forms, such as those involving auxiliary words and other periphrastic constructions, must be defined as subcategorization frames and not as inflectional paradigms.

Accordingly, the simple past and the simple present must be included into the inflectional paradigms for English verbs, but the compound tenses (past perfect, past progressive, future, etc) must be defined inside a subcategorization frame, because they involve the insertion of new words that play different syntactic roles and may not be contiguous to the base form (the negation, for instance, comes between the auxiliary verb and the main verb, as in I will not work).

Reference

The paradigms are referred as follows:

• by its common name (such as "first declension", "first group"), in case of well-established reference;
• by the rule itself, in case of single-rule paradigms;
• by the most distinctive rule, if any; or
• by a "leading form", i.e., a typical example (a prototype) representative of the whole category, otherwise.

There are two predefined paradigms in the UNL^arium:

INVARIANT

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

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.

Syntax

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

How to create inflectional paradigms

How to create inflectional paradigms

Examples