WORDEN: a PYTHON interface to automatic (non)word generation

Abstract

WORDEN is a PYTHON implementation of a knowledge engine containing data on the phonological structure of Italian words and on their frequency. These data are imported from the PHONITALIA database and used with a rules base to provide a formal description of the operations needed to generate words, nonsense words and phonological neighbourhoods for speech production and perception studies. The knowledge engine supports a wide number of queries from the command line but can also be used via a specifically designed graphical user interface. In this paper, we report the formal rules included in WORDEN and provide usage examples to illustrate the capabilities of the tool.