Morphological layer

The morphological layer of the model caters for orthographical and phonological information (as a structural symmetry between Written System and Phonetic System has been found). Its major component is the MORPHOLOGICAL UNIT (UM). Relevant information about written and phonic forms (including abbreviated forms), inflectional behaviour, derivation, internal composition and etymology, may be expressed within this layer. Criteria are proposed for distinguishing several UMs for not-so-straightforward situations.

Typology of UMs:

• AUTONOMOUS MORPHOLOGICAL UNITS
  • Simple Morphological Units
  • Agglutinated Morphological Units
  • Compound Morphological Units (frozen compound words): criteria are suggested for those compounds to consider as frozen (vs compound units that could be described at the syntactic level)
• NON-AUTONOMOUS MORPHOLOGICAL UNITS (mainly affixes, but also units that can be found only in compound words)

Characteristics of UMs:

• WRITTEN AND PHONETIC FORMS (UMGs and UMPs), with possible mention of their radical(s) ; variants can be expressed through this feature
• GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES (a list of parts-of-the-speech is defined, with indications about determiners, noun-adjective distinction, status of past participles)
• MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES, i.e. Combinations of Morphological Features (CombTM) that can characterize a paradigm of inflected forms (Gender, Number, Mood, Person, Possessor Person)
• INFLECTED FORMS
  • Inflectional behaviour of Simple Words (MFG and MFP), that may be described through alternative methods of computation (CFFG and CFFP):
    • addition of an affix to a radical (which reduces the total number of CFFGs and CFFPs)
    • removal or addition of characters for a written or phonemic morphological unit (which relieves the necessity for a morphemic description of UMGs and UMPs)
  • System of inflection of Compounds (MFC), with respect to the behaviour of each component, both internal to the compound and submitted to contextual variation
• DERIVATION is expressed through an ordered set of relations oriented from the derived to its components, qualified according to status (basis, suffix, etc.)
• ABBRIDGED FORMS are expressed through relations between UMs, that may be typed according to the nature of the abbreviating mechanism (acronym, initials, etc.)
• USAGE VALUES, i.e. Combinations of usage values (CombVE) that can characterize UMs (rare, archaic, colloquial, etc.)
• ETYMOLOGY