KATR: A Set-Based Extension of DATR*
Raphael A. Finkel, Lei Shen · 2002
In the framework of Network Morphology (Corbett & Fraser 1993; Fraser & Corbett 1995, 1997), realizational models of natural-language morphology have customarily been defined in DATR, a language for lexical knowledge representation designed and implemented by Roger Evans and Gerald Gazdar (Evans & Gazdar 1989a,b, 1996). We show that certain kinds of morphological analyses that are wholly consonant with the general program of Network Morphology are not directly expressible in existing forms of DATR; we therefore propose and exemplify KATR, an extension of DATR whose motivation is to accommodate these desired kinds of morphological analyses. The proposed modifications are motivated by the need to represent a word’s morphosyntactic property as essentially unordered; to account for the incidence of nonlocal sandhi phenomena; to define common patterns of inflectional syncretism; and to allow certain morphological rules to apply in “expanded mode ” (Stump 2001). Although KATR affords morphological definitions that are more streamlined than those afforded by DATR, its generative capacity is no greater than that of DATR, since both languages are capable of emulating a Turing machine.