Computational Aspect of Verb Classification in Malayalam

Abstract

In applications like Morphological Analyzer, Machine Aided Translation (MAT), Spell checker, etc. the verb synthesis and or generation are prime tasks. For paradigm approach verb classification is needed. There exist many verb classifications in Malayalam. Suranad Kunjan Pillai’s classification contains sixteen classes, Wickremasinghe and Menon proposed eight, Sekhar and Glazov have twelve, Asher and Prabodhchandran Nair have four and Valentine have two.[1] All descriptions focus on past tense forms, because the much simpler forms present and future tense forms are easily predictable. In regard to verbs an entirely new item of work had to be undertaken. The verbs in the language present a multiplicity of conjugational forms which may perplex anyone who is not thoroughly familiar with them.[3] This paper is focused on the classification of verbs based on the past forms and the morphophonemic changes in the verb roots. This classification is basically done for the rule based MAT System and can be used in the similar NLP applications.