Modeling Reduplication with 2-way Finite-State Transducers

Hossep Dolatian, Jeffrey Heinz


Abstract
This article describes a novel approach to the computational modeling of reduplication. Reduplication is a well-studied linguistic phenomenon. However, it is often treated as a stumbling block within finite-state treatments of morphology. Most finite-state implementations of computational morphology cannot adequately capture the productivity of unbounded copying in reduplication, nor can they adequately capture bounded copying. We show that an understudied type of finite-state machines, two-way finite-state transducers (2-way FSTs), captures virtually all reduplicative processes, including total reduplication. 2-way FSTs can model reduplicative typology in a way which is convenient, easy to design and debug in practice, and linguistically-motivated. By virtue of being finite-state, 2-way FSTs are likewise incorporable into existing finite-state systems and programs. A small but representative typology of reduplicative processes is described in this article, alongside their corresponding 2-way FST models.
Anthology ID:
W18-5807
Volume:
Proceedings of the Fifteenth Workshop on Computational Research in Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology
Month:
October
Year:
2018
Address:
Brussels, Belgium
Editors:
Sandra Kuebler, Garrett Nicolai
Venue:
EMNLP
SIG:
SIGMORPHON
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
66–77
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/W18-5807
DOI:
10.18653/v1/W18-5807
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Hossep Dolatian and Jeffrey Heinz. 2018. Modeling Reduplication with 2-way Finite-State Transducers. In Proceedings of the Fifteenth Workshop on Computational Research in Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology, pages 66–77, Brussels, Belgium. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Modeling Reduplication with 2-way Finite-State Transducers (Dolatian & Heinz, EMNLP 2018)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/W18-5807.pdf