Morphotactics of manipuri verbs: A finite state approach

Abstract

The present paper is to study the morphotactics of Manipuri verbs using Finite State Approach. Manipuri is a highly agglutinating and morphologically complex Tibeto-Burman language. It has only two word forms- noun and verb. The other word forms are derived from verb by means of affixation. For instance, negation, noun, adjectives and adverbs are derived from verbs and all the verbs in Manipuri are bound in nature that means they cannot stand on its own. Affixes play a very significant role in the word formation process. Verb covers the main morphology of the language. Hence, it becomes mandatory to study Manipuri verbs since it plays the major role in word formation process and set out rules for various Natural Language Processing applications.