Digital tools

Together with Raphael Finkel (Dept. of Computer Science, University of Kentucky), I have helped develop Kratylos, a program that lets you display, query and browse interlinear glossed text as well as time aligned transcriptions from a variety of formats online. Read about it here.

More recently, we have produced an implemented theory of derivational phonology and morphology: the Phonomaton.

The Phonomaton calculates derivations using an extension of SPE phonological rules with a full (modifiable) feature set. It allows for underspecification and can handle autosegmental tonology, among many other things.

The Phonomaton’s cousin, the Optimaton, implements a version of classic Optimality Theory using the same feature set and similar notation. See the library of examples to get a feel for the syntax, which should already be mostly familiar to phonologists.

Finally, the Morphoton implements a theory of morphology similar to that proposed in Anderson’s (1992) A-morphous Morphology and is built on top of the Phonomaton with all of its goodies.

Coming soon is the Syntacticon, a tools that builds upon the Morphoton but creates feature bundles through syntactic operations, a bit like Distributed Morphology (but not exactly). A working version should be public at some point in 2025 but please feel free to email me if you can’t wait that long.

If you happen to read Filipino/Tagalog, here is a recent presentation extolling and expounding upon the Morphoton’s virtues:

Kaufman, Daniel. 2024. “Ang Morphoton at ang pagsasagawa ng isang teoriya ng morpolohiya”. Presented to the Linguistic Society of the Philippines. slides video