Building and contracting a linguistic dictionary

A computer hardware system for building and contracting a linguistic dictionary, the linguistic dictionary comprising a list of surface forms and a list of normalized forms, each normalized form being associated with a surface form, comprising:

• a processor including a parsing component and an edit operation component, wherein
• the parsing component is configured to compare each character of a surface form with each character of a normalized form of the surface form;
• and
• the edit operation component is configured to
• determine an edit operation for each character compared, and;
• generate a transform code from the set of the edit operations specifying how to transform the surface form to the normalized form,
• the normalized form specifies a first form of a particular word, and
• the surface form specifies a second and different form of the particular word.

A computer program product comprising a computer usable storage medium having stored therein computer usable program code, which when executed on a computer hardware system, causes the computer hardware system to perform:

• comparing each character of a surface form with each character of a normalized form of the surface form;
• in response to the comparing, determining an edit operation for each character compared;
• and
• generating a transform code from the set of the edit operations specifying how to transform the surface form to the normalized form, wherein
• the normalized form specifies a first form of a particular word, and
• the surface form specifies a second and different form of the particular word.