A Word Analysis System for German Hyphenation, Full Text Search, and Spell Checking, with Regard to the Latest Reform of German Orthography

In text processing systems German words require special treatment because of the possibility to form compound words as a combination of existing words. To this end, a universal word analysis system will be introduced which allows an analysis of all words in German texts according to their atomic components. A recursive decomposition algorithm, following the rules for word flexion, derivation, and compound generation in the German language, splits words into their smallest relevant parts (= atoms), which are stored in an atom table. The system is based on the foundations described in this article, and is being used for reliable, sense-conveying hyphenation, as well as for sense-conveying full text search, and in limited form also as a spelling checker.