Redefining Paradigm for Computer‐Aided Language Instruction

Abstract

Abstract: This article proposes a means by which inflectional paradigms can be promoted from their primary present status as references at the end of textbooks to a more central role in the language learning process. This can be done by encouraging each student to determine how words of a given part of speech divide into paradigms, and how those paradigms will be visually represented. This reinterpretation of the largely frozen notion of “paradigm” is derived from work on a natural language processing system that required a more rigorous definition of the word than is commonly found in most descriptive grammars. That natural language processing system, and its potential application to the task of language learning, are described in this article as well.