cs.CLMay 26, 2026

Formalization of Malagasy conjugation

Authors: Joro Ny Aina RanaivoarisonEric LaporteBaholisoa Simone Ralalaoherivony

Organizations: University of Antananarivo, Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherche Appliquée au Malgache, Madagascar · Université Paris-Est, Laboratoire d'informatique Gaspard-Monge CNRS UMR 8049, F77454 Marne-la-Vallée, France

Abstract

This paper reports the core linguistic work performed to construct a dictionary-based morphological analyser for Malagasy simple verbs. It uses the Unitex platform and comprised the contruction of an electronic dictionary for Malagasy simple verbs. The data is encoded on the basis of morphological features. The morphological variations of verb stems and their combination with inflectional affixes are formalized in finite-state transducers represented by editable graphs. 78 transducers allow Unitex to generate a dictionary of allomorphs of stems. 271 other transducers are used by the morphological analyser of Unitex to recognize the stem and the affixes in conjugated verbs. The design of the dictionary and transducers prioritizes readability, so that they can be extended and updated by linguists.

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