Phonological Correspondence as a Tool for Historical Analysis: An Algorithm for Word Alignment

The underpinnings of this algorithm were originally written as part of a word-comparison algorithm that would ignore various types of phonological changes in order to split words up into morphemes (Albro 1997). Covington’s (1996) article led to the realization that the algorithm might be used as an improvement (or at least a different take) on his method of aligning words. In its original form, the algorithm allowed the user to specify three different types of phonological laxity: