Summary

The Word and Paradigm approach to morphology associates lexemes with tables of surface forms for different morphosyntactic property sets. Researchers express their realizational theories, which show how to derive these surface forms, using formalisms such as Network Morphology and Paradigm Function Morphology. The tables of surface forms also lend themselves to a study of the implicative theories, which infer the realizations in some cells of the inflectional system from the realizations of other cells.

There is an art to building realizational theories. First, the theories should be correct, that is, they should generate the right surface forms. Second, they should be elegant, which is much harder to capture, but includes the desiderata of simplicity and expressiveness. Without software to test a realizational theory, it is easy to sacrifice correctness for elegance. Therefore, software that takes a realizational theory and generates surface forms is an essential part of any theorist’s toolbox.

Discovering implicative rules that connect the cells in an inflectional system is often quite difficult. Some rules are immediately apparent, but others can be subtle. Software that automatically analyzes an entire table of surface forms for many lexemes can help automate the discovery process.

Researchers can use Web-based computerized tools to test their realizational theories and to discover implicative rules.