Computing Declarative Prosodic Morphology

TL;DR

This paper introduces a declarative computational approach to prosodic morphology using constraints and incremental optimization, demonstrated with Hebrew verb forms in a flexible formalism, enabling efficient analysis and generation.

Contribution

It presents a novel hybrid method combining declarative constraints with finite-state techniques, enhancing expressivity and efficiency in prosodic morphology processing.

Findings

Efficient finite-state oracle for prosodic morphology

Ability to analyze unknown words without special mechanisms

Enhanced expressivity over traditional finite-state transducer methods

Abstract

This paper describes a computational, declarative approach to prosodic morphology that uses inviolable constraints to denote small finite candidate sets which are filtered by a restrictive incremental optimization mechanism. The new approach is illustrated with an implemented fragment of Modern Hebrew verbs couched in MicroCUF, an expressive constraint logic formalism. For generation and parsing of word forms, I propose a novel off-line technique to eliminate run-time optimization. It produces a finite-state oracle that efficiently restricts the constraint interpreter's search space. As a byproduct, unknown words can be analyzed without special mechanisms. Unlike pure finite-state transducer approaches, this hybrid setup allows for more expressivity in constraints to specify e.g. token identity for reduplication or arithmetic constraints for phonetics.