Development of a Stemmer for the Greek Language - SAIS

2.5 Stem in Greek words
As we mentioned above stem is the static part of a word. Some words in Greek
language have two different stems. For the nouns and the adjectives, in their
different inflections, the stem increased at one syllable. And this is not an
exception in the Greek language. Some examples below show the two different
stems for the same root word:
Single Number Plural Number Stems Suffixes
ΚΥΜΑ ΚΥΜΑΤΑ ΚΥΜ, ΚΥΜΑΤ Α
(wave)
(waves)
ΓΙΑΓΙΑ ΓΙΑΓΙΑ∆ΕΣ ΓΙΑΓΙ, ΓΙΑΓΙΑ∆ Α, ΕΣ
(grandmother) (grandmothers)
ΑΛΕΠΟΥ ΑΛΕΠΟΥ∆ΕΣ ΑΛΕΠ, ΑΛΕΠΟΥ∆ ΟΥ, ΕΣ
(fox)
(foxes)
Table 3: Different stems of nouns
According to the Greek grammar, these two stems correspond, if the extra syllable
considered as a part of the suffix. In this case we have the same stem but more
suffixes, as it is presented in the Table 4.
Single Number Plural Number Stems Suffixes
ΚΥΜΑ ΚΥΜΑΤΑ ΚΥΜ Α, ΑΤΑ
(wave)
(waves)
ΓΙΑΓΙΑ ΓΙΑΓΙΑ∆ΕΣ ΓΙΑΓΙ Α, Α∆ΕΣ
(grandmother) (grandmothers)
ΑΛΕΠΟΥ ΑΛΕΠΟΥ∆ΕΣ ΑΛΕΠ ΟΥ, ΟΥ∆ΕΣ
(fox)
(foxes)
Table 4: Corresponding stems
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