Word Prediction For Inflected Languages: Application To Basque Language

Several word prediction methods to help the communication of people with disabilities can be found in the recent literature. Most Of them have been developed for English or other non-inflected languages. While most of these methods can be modified to be used in other languages with similar structures, they may not be directly adapted to inflected languages. In this paper some word prediction techniques are reviewed and the difficulties to apply them to inflected languages are studied. Possibilities for word prediction methods that cope with the enormous number of different inflexions of each word are proposed, using Basque as the target language. Finally, conclusions about word prediction for inflected languages are extracted from the experience with the Basque language. 1 I n t r o d u c t i o n So far, word prediction methods have been developed in order to increase message composition rate for people with severe motor and speech disabilities. These methods try to guess what is going to be the current or even the next word the user is trying to type. Their results are normally measured in terms of keystroke savings (Ks) 1 . To our knowledge, the design of word prediction methods is mainly focused on non-inflected languages, like English. Words in these types of languages have a small amount of variation, like the ones due to number (singular or plural) for instance,