A SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF THE ẸDO BASIC CLAUSE USING FINITE STATE DIAGRAMS

ABSTRACT

This research is an attempt to introduce the concept of computational linguistics in African languages using the Ẹdo language as a case study. This research reviews previous research done by scholars in computational linguistics especially in the field of computational morphology. This research is a replica of the works done by these scholars, but in this research work would be done in the field of computational syntax, by examining the phrase structure of the Ẹdo language using a computational model known as the finite state machine. One of the reasons for the slow development of computational syntax is due to the semantic interpretation of the strings produced by these machines, so in this work the syntactic correctness of the strings produced by these machines is looked into. The data that are used in this work are gotten from the Ẹdo language and are elicited by means of a grammatical questionnaire from competent Ẹdo native speakers. The data are analyzed syntactically using phrase structure rules and computationally using the model in use which is the finite state machine model. The finite state machine model was able to build a recognizer for the basic phrases of the Ẹdo language and the difference in the syntactic structures of the Ẹdo language and the English language was observed to reside mainly in the structure of the Noun phrase and Verb phrase. Works in computational syntax especially in African language would lead to advancements in computational linguistic research in Africa and this would have a great impact on the country’s development since science and technology is an integral part of the development of a country.