A Computational Approach to Zulu Verb Morphology within the Context of Lexical Semantics
Résumé
The central research question that is addressed in this article is: How can ZulMorph, a finite state morphological analyser for Zulu, be employed to add value to Zulu lexical semantics with specific reference to Zulu verbs? The verb is the most complex word category in Zulu. Due to the agglutinative nature of Zulu morphology, limited information can be computationally extracted from running Zulu text without the support of sufficiently reliable computational morphological analysis by means of which the essential meanings of, amongst others, verbs can be exposed. In this article we describe a corpus-based approach to adding the English meaning to Zulu extended verb roots, thereby enhancing ZulMorph as a lexical knowledge base.Copyright of all material published in Lexikos will be vested in the Board of Directors of the Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal. Authors are free, however, to use their material elsewhere provided that Lexikos (AFRILEX Series) is acknowledged as the original publication source.
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