Inflectional paradigms

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

Contents

When to use inflectional paradigms

Inflectional paradigms must be created in case of regular or almost regular inflective behavior, i.e., whenever there can be stated a regular pattern for inflecting words, such as nouns, adjectives and verbs.

When not to use inflectional paradigms

Inflectional paradigms should not be used in case of non-inflectional words (such as adverbs) or words that are already inflected (such as personal pronouns). Inflectional paradigms should also be avoided in case of irregular behavior, which should be described rather by inflectional rules.

Example

The plural of English nouns is considerably regular and can be treated, in most cases, by the following inflectional paradigms:

Paradigm Rule Description Example
1 PLR:=0>"s"; Add "s" to the end of the word boy > boys
2 PLR:="y">"ies"; Replace "y" by "ies" at the end of the word city > cities
3 PLR:=0>"es"; Add "es" to the end of the word kiss > kisses
4 PLR:="f">"ves"; Replace "f" by "ves" at the end of the word woolf > woolves

However, there are several special cases that, being very limited, should be treated by inflectional rules instead of inflectional paradigms:

Rule Description Case
PLR:="men"; Replace the whole word by "men" man > men
PLR:="mice"; Replace the whole word by "mice" mouse > mice
PLR:="feet"; Replace the whole word by "feet" foot > feet
PLR:="children"; Replace the whole word by "children" child > children
... ... ...

The difference between inflectional paradigms and inflectional rules is mainly a question of frequency. If a rule is applicable to several different words, it should be defined as a general inflectional paradigm; if it is applicable to a single word or to a very limited number of cases, it should be defined as an inflectional rule inside the very entry.

Syntax

Inflectional paradigms (as well as inflectional rules) should comply with the M-rule formalism for writing morphological rules in the UNLarium framework.

Predefined paradigms

There are two predefined paradigms in the UNLarium:

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). In this latter case, the field "Descriptive Morphology" should explicit the value of the lemma.
IRREGULAR
If the word is inflectional but does not follow an existing paradigm, as in irregular forms (such as "man", "mouse", "foot" and "child" listed above). In this case, the corresponding inflectional rules should be provided in the field "Inflectional Rules".
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