Two-Level Model for Morphological Analysis

This paper presents a new l inguist ic, computationally implemented model for morphological analysis and synthesis. It is general in the sense that the same language independent algorithm and the same computer program can operate on a wide range of languages, including highly i n flected ones such as Finnish, Russian or Sanskrit. The new model is unrestricted in scope and it is capable of handling the whole language system as well as ordinary running text. A f u l l description for Finnish has been completed and tested, and the entries in the Dictionary of Modern Standard Finnish have been converted into a format compatible with i t . The model is based on a lexicon that defines the word roots, inflectional morphemes and certain nonphonological alternation patterns, and on a set of para l le l rules that define phonologically oriented phenomena. The rules are implemented as para l le l f i n i t e state automata, and the same description can be run both in the producing and in the analyzing direction.