ALE-RA Home Page

ALE-RA is an ALE extension to: The -R module implements G. Stump's Paradigm Function Morphology. On top of ALE's lexical rules it introduces word-formation rules, which are primarily provided as a means for expressing inflectional morphology. The lexicon is still fully compiled (as in ALE); only the descriptive device that drives the compilation of the lexicon is different.

The -A module implements the finite-state Bird & Ellison one-level phonology and extends it to interface with ALE and its -R extension. Again, the lexicon is fully compiled and ALE compatible, but the base lexicon representations of form and the exponency statements of morphological rules are now FSAs and not Prolog atoms.

Further information

To understand what is happening in ALE-RA, you're currently best off consulting the documentation directory below.

Distribution pack

The complete distibution is in the file ale-ra-1.2.tar.gz

Unpacked, it consists of the following files:

README
You're (more or less) reading it.
REVISIONS
Revision history
Directory doc contains:
guide-ra.ps
manual for ALE-RA in postscript
thesis-r.ps
more about ALE-R; fragment from my PhD thesis
thesis-a.ps
more about ALE-(R)A; fragment from my PhD thesis
guide.tex
manual for ALE in LaTeX (B.Carpenter, G.Penn)
libFsa.doc
Documentation for the -A FSA library (S. Finch)
Directory gram contains:
father.pl
a demo on the Slovene word 'oc"e'/father (-R)
mac_r.pl
some Macedonian verbs, after Stump 89' (-R)
ktb.pl
verb forms of the infamous Arabic 'to write' (-RA)
mac_ra.pl
an -A rendering of mac_r.pl (-RA)
phd_wolf1.pl
a version of the wolf/wolves alternation (-RA)
phd_wolf2.pl
a version of the wolf/wolves alternation (-RA)
phd_wolf3.pl
a version of the wolf/wolves alternation (-RA)
svm_r.pl
HPSG grammar (by G. Penn) & Slovene verbal paradigms (-R)
svm_ra.pl
ditto, but with stress patterns too (-RA)
Directory bin contains:
ale_ra.pl
ALE V2.0.2 + RA V1.2 extension
Makefile
FSA C++ lib compilation
Fsa_interface.cc
FSA C++/Prolog interface code (by S. Bird)
Fsa.cc, Fsa.h, Set.h
FSA C++ library (by S. Finch)
testfsa.cc
program for testing the FSA library
sicstus.h
C/Prolog interface code from the Sicstus distribution

Installing and Running ALE-RA

ALE-RA expects Unix, Sicstus Prolog 2.1.9 or later and the GNU C compiler. The environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH must be set so that g++ and gcc libraries are in the library path. To install, copy all the files in the bin directory to where you intend to run the program and type 'make'. If all goes well, the object files (Fsa.o and Fsa_interface.o) will be produced. These must be kept in the same directory as ale_ra.pl To run, ale_ra.pl should be compiled in Prolog. Currently, Prolog should be invoked in the directory in which ALE-RA resides. It's easiest if the grammar files are there too.

Credits

ALE was written by Bob Carpenter & Gerald Penn, -RA by Tomaz Erjavec, with the FSA library implemented in C++ by Steve Finch and the C++/Prolog interface by Steven Bird. Steven has also given me lots of useful advice and comments.
Last updated 15. Nov. 1995
Comments welcome! et