Apertium Indic
Apertium Indic is a subfamily of Apertium-based systems for Indic/Indo-Aryan languages. This has the potential to also include Dravidian languages, in the future. This page defines a set of standards and definitions that ought to generalise fairly cross-linguistically across the entire family, and that should be followed as much as possible. A standard reference book often used is The Indo-Aryan Languages [1].
Currently, Marathi has the most comprehensive morphological analyser in Apertium and should be used as a reference for building other analysers.
Morphology
Nominal
- Follow Masica's three-level morphology wherever possible: nouns are nominative (<nom>), altered roots are oblique (<obl>), altered roots with cases directly mark case, postpositions attach to the oblique.
- The main difference between a case and a postposition is whether there can be an intervening element between the oblique and the postposition. Other differences are subjective, but languages oughtn't to have more than 10 cases at most.
- Genitives are separated from the root despite being a traditional case.
- Pronouns should not be treated as fusional and should analyse the same way a noun would, whether more complex forms have been lexicalised or not.
Verbal
- All verb forms must be covered - this goes without saying.
- Verbs typically inflect for perfective/imperfective aspect, not past/present tense. Tense is imparted by copulas.
- Gerunds exist and typically overlap with infinitives, but can take cases/postpositions.
- Light verbs (N + V) should be treated as separate elements. If N cannot exist as an independent word, gloss it as <adv>.
- Compound verbs (V + V) receive no special treatment.
Verb form table
Massive TODO
Active contributors
If you're contributing to any Indic language, add yourself here.
| Name | IRC nick | Indic projects involved in |
|---|---|---|
| Vinit Ravishankar | vin-ivar | Marathi |
Bibliography
[1] Masica, C.P. (1993) The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge University Press. https://books.google.com.mt/books?id=Itp2twGR6tsC
