Lexd: A Finite-State Lexicon Compiler for Non-Suffixational Morphologies

• Main Authors: Swanson, Daniel, Howell, Nick
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: lexicon compiler; nonlinear morphology; morphotactic transducer; hyperminimisation; finite state morphology; Chukchi
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10138/327807; https://doi.org/10.31885/9789515150257.13

This paper presents lexd, a lexicon compiler for languages with non-suffixational morphology, which is intended to be faster and easier to use than existing solutions while also being compatible with other tools. We perform a case-study for Chukchi, comparing against a hand-optimised analyser written in lexc, and find that while lexd is easier to use, performance remains an obstacle to its use at production level. We also compare performance between lexd and hfst-lexc for three analysers still in the prototype phase, finding that lexd is at least as fast, sometimes faster, to compile; we conclude it is a reasonable choice for prototyping new analysers. Future work will explore how to move lexd performance toward production-grade.