A Computational Architecture for the Morphology of Upper Tanana

Abstract

In this paper, we describe a computational model of Upper Tanana, a highly endangered Dene (Athabaskan) language spoken in eastern interior Alaska (USA) and in the Yukon Territory (Canada). This model not only parses and generates Upper Tanana verb forms, but uses the language's verb theme category system, a system of lexical-inflectional verb classes, to additionally predict possible derivations and their morphological behavior. This allows us to model a large portion of the Upper Tanana verb lexicon, making it more accessible to learners and scholars alike. Generated derivations will be compared against the narrative corpus of the language as well to the (much more comprehensive) lexical documentation of closely related languages.

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