A Hierarchial Description of the Portuguese Verb

This paper presents an analysis of the Portuguese using DATR, a language designed for lexical representation by nonmonotonic inheritance hierarchies. The analysis shows that the verb has a consistent structure and that variations can be organized into subclasses that are themselves regular. The default inheritance rule of DATR permits and economical description of the structure of the verb while also retaining sufficient information that exceptions can be described in the appropriate points of the grammar.