Finite State Morphology

by Kenneth R. Beesley, Lauri Karttunen

The finite-state paradigm of computer science has provided a basis for natural-language applications that are efficient, elegant, and robust. This volume is a practical guide to finite-state theory and the affiliated programming languages lexc and xfst. Readers will learn how to write tokenizers, spelling checkers, and especially morphological analyzer/generators for words in English, French, Finnish, Hungarian, and other languages.

Included are graded introductions, examples, and exercises suitable for individual study as well as formal courses. These take advantage of widely-tested lexc and xfst applications that are just becoming available for noncommercial use via the Internet.

Genres: Linguistics

503 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2003

Reviews

[Tolib · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very well written book. I had no idea what to expect from the book before reading it. I didn't know much about finite state machines. The book explains this and many other concepts in clear terms and doesn't shy away from repeating the important points to reinforce the user's understanding. The book also is very hands-on and discusses various issues that beginners may run into when developing finite state morphology. I highly recommend this book, for both its style and content. If you don't have access to Xerox xfst and other tools used in the book, you can instead use foma, which has most of the features of the Xerox software.