Computer Analysis of Aymara Morphology: A Two-Level, Finite-State Approach

Kenneth R. Beesley stuart N. Newton ALPNET 190 West 800 North Provo, UT 84604 (801) 379-2300 This paper describes a working computer program which performs morphological analysis and dictionary lookup of words in Aymara, an Andean language spoken in Bolivia and Peru. Aymara is noteworthy for the richness of its morphology; there are, for example, 24 suffix classes that can follow a verb root. The analysis is written using a morphology analysis tool based on Koskenniemi' s Two-Level Theory of morphology; this generalized morphology tool is driven by lexicons and tables and can be applied to other languages, including semitic languages, without modification of the code.