An Algorithmic Approach to English Pluralization

An Algorithmic Approach to English Pluralization

摘要

This paper discusses some of the issues involved in designing robust and comprehensive algorithms which convert singular English nouns, verbs and adjectives to their appropriate plural forms. Four such algorithms are given: one for each part of speech which inflects in the plural, and a unified algorithm for all such parts of speech. A word comparison algorithm which can identify words which differ only in their grammatical number is also given. Finally, an overview is given of a full implementation of the various algorithms in the Perl programming language.