Systematization of inflectional patterns in the Grammatical Dictionary of Polish

Abstract

The purpose of the Grammatical Dictionary of Polish (sgjp.pl) in regard to inflection is to work out exact paradigms of all inflected lexemes of modern written Polish. These have been established for the most part in the previous versions of the Dictionary. The aim of the online edition of the Dictionary, its latest iteration, was to set up clear and easy-to-understand symbols for the inflectional patterns. Laying the groundwork, we analyzed a number of regularly contrasted written forms, which we then grouped into lexemes. A wordform consists of a core, common to all wordforms belonging to a lexeme, and an end (these parts are fixed graphically and do not correspond to traditional terms: stem and ending). Lexemes are grouped into classes (these correspond roughly to traditional parts of speech). Lexemes in a class share similarities in their inflection, and thus paradigms. Classes are categorized into inflectional patterns. Lexemes categorized under the same inflectional pattern have identical end in all wordforms. There are 6 general types of inflectional patterns: nominal, pronominal, adjectival, numeral, verbal and prepositional. Each inflectional pattern has its unique symbol. Each symbol consists of three parts. The first part is a letter, which denotes the general type of the inflectional pattern. The second part of the symbol is a sub-type of an inflectional pattern. The third part of a symbol shows alternations and non-standard phenomena in the paradigm of a given lexeme.