Describing Old Czech Declension Patterns for Automatic Text Analysis

Resumen

This paper focuses on describing declension patterns in Old Czech (West Slavonic language, stadium between approx.1300 and 1500) which is one part of the base serving the automatic annotation of the Old-Czech Text Bank. Weintroduce our approach to automatic morphological analysis, its principles (historical justifiability, constant regardto system of the language and systematic account of phonological changes) and subparts (a dictionary, a descriptionof patterns, a list of stem changes accompanying declension, rules for sound changes, and the list of exceptions). Wealso illustrate the process of searching for declension patterns of two feminine declensions in complicated mutualinteraction – i-stems and ja-stems. We came to the conclusions that borrowed endings documented in availableresources (forms like zem-ech (LOC.PL, combination of ja-stem noun zem-ě (a land) with i-stem ending -ech) arenot exceptions; they belong to the system of language and the base for automatic analysis should treat them as such.