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Modeling Northern Haida Verb Morphology

This paper describes the development of a computational model of the morphology of Northern Haida based on finite state machines (FSMs), with a focus on verbs. Northern Haida is highly endangered, and a member of the isolate Haida macrolanguage, spoken in British Columbia and Alaska. Northern Haida is a highly-inflecting language whose verbal morphology relies largely on suffixes, with a limited number of prefixes. The suffixes trigger morphophonological changes in the stem, participate in blocking, and exhibit variable ordering in certain constructions. The computational model of Northern Haida verb morphology is capable of handling these complex affixation patterns and the morphophonological alternations that they engender. In this paper, we describe the challenges we encountered and the solutions we propose, while contextualizing the endeavour in the description, documentation and revitalization of First Nations Languages in Canada.