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# A Logical Analysis of Autosegmental Approaches to Root-and-Pattern Morphology in Arabic

**Authors:** [Sarah Payne](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/sarah-payne/) · **Year:** 2026 · **Venue:** Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics 2026 (pages 90–99) **Link:** [aclanthology.org/2026.scil-main.9](https://aclanthology.org/2026.scil-main.9/) · library `lingbulk-2026-payne-logical-analysis-autosegmental-approaches-root` · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) (ACL Anthology)

[**0** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W7166847268) openalex · 2026-10-18[Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics 2026](https://aclanthology.org/volumes/2026.scil-main/)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/2026.scil-main.9/)
- [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/2026.scil-main.9.pdf)
- [DOI 10.18653/v1/2026.scil-main.9](https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2026.scil-main.9)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W7166847268)

**Authors (1)**

1. [Payne, Sarah](https://openalex.org/A5128921473) h 0 · 0 citations · 13 works

Citations and author metrics from openalex (2026-10-18); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

Jardine (2017) showed that left-to-right association of autosegmental representations of arbitrary length is not definable in monadic second-order logic, which casts doubt on the cognitive plausibility of the autosegmental approach. Payne shows that the finite length of the Arabic consonantal root avoids this problem. She builds a relational model with three tiers (prosodic template, affixes, root) and the precedence relation, adds constraints such as "each C slot links to one element", and writes McCarthy's (1981) analysis of the fifteen binyanim of the root KTB as association transductions in first-order logic. Binyan-specific rules, the flop of reflexive [t] in binyan VIII and the erasure rule for gemination in II, V and XIII, are written as binyan-indexed transductions. The paper is formal; it reports no measurements, and it notes that the result depends on the root being finite, not on its exact length.

## Ideas

- I1. Write the binyan-indexed association as a finite table (binyan, template slots, affix position) and apply it in Rust, left to right, with no search. Each generated form then has a traceable chain of associations.
- I2. Hebrew hitpa'el forms have the same t-infix problem as binyan VIII. Write Payne's flop rule as a rule and test it on the hitpa'el forms in MACULA. The paper names Hebrew as a possible extension.
- I3. Use the paper's Table 1 (the root KTB in all fifteen binyanim, in the perfective, imperfective and participle columns) as a closed gold test for any Semitic root-and-pattern generator. The set is small and closed, so a generator either passes it or fails.

## For Mova

I1 goes into [The verb](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/06-verb/), as a verb-stem table. I2 goes into [The weak verbs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/07-weak-verbs/). I3 is a test set for the same verb-stem table and for any generator in `tools/hbo`.

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.18653/v1/2026.scil-main.9](https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2026.scil-main.9)

```
@inproceedings{payne2026logical,
  title = {{A Logical Analysis of Autosegmental Approaches to Root-and-Pattern Morphology in Arabic}},
  author = {Payne, Sarah},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics 2026},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.18653/v1/2026.scil-main.9},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2026.scil-main.9}
}
```

- [← previous A Comprehensive Full-Form Lexicon for Arabic NLP and Speech Technology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/lingbulk-2026-haralambous-comprehensive-full-form-lexicon-arabic/)
- [next → Are LLMs Good Text Diacritizers? An Arabic and Yoruba Case Study](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/lingbulk-2026-toyin-are-llms-good-text-diacritizers/)
- [↑ back to Semitic languages](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/sem/)

## References

17 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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