Affix Positions and Cooccurrences: The PARADIGM Program

Abstract

The program Grimes describes in this little book represents both a significant departure from, and contribution to, the traditional approach to computer-assisted morphological analysis. The traditional approach, exemplified in programs such as those described in Koskenniemi (1983) and Wolfart & Pardo (1979), tests a user-supplied morphological analysis against a set of word-forms. The PARADIGM program is concerned with a different aspect of morphological analysis. The user supplies a list of segmented word-forms, with morphemes separated by blanks or dashes (the output from either of the previously mentioned programs could be used), and the program produces output from which the user can deduce both relative affix positions (the slots the morphemes occupy) and various types of cooccurrence restrictions. Unlike the s temming of lemmatizat ion programs, the PARADIGM program does not test or apply a preexistent morphological analysis, but rather performs some limited analytic functions. The program proceeds through three distinct stages of analysis: