/not/ display affix category and slot

[Paul Unger]

A colleague just asked me the following question:

The sample dictionary entries for affixes are displaying the category that each affix attaches to and the slot it fills. This is way too much information for my audience. For affixes I would rather designate them as ‘pronominal suffix’, ‘transitive suffix’, etc., and not say anything (in an automated abbreviated way) about what it attaches to and what slot it fills, unless I include that as a part of the prose in the definition. My audience is not going to understand that N:Possessor right after the headword means that the headword is an affix that attaches to nouns and fills the possessor slot. How can I make the grammatical info disappear for affixes and yet still label the grammatical category of stems?

Would a possible workaround be to cheat and not label them as affixes in the morph type, and then add ‘pronominal suffix’ to the category list?

I thought it might be possible to control the visibility of affix information in Configure Dictionary (Main Entry > Senses > Grammatical Info.), but one can only control the visibility of 'Slots (for Infl. Affixes)'--not Category Info. (for Infl. Affixes)... And then I was also going to recommend creating a Custom Field (e.g., 'Grammatical Info basic').

Any advice appreciated!

Paul

[Paul Unger]

My colleague found a work-around:

In the dialogue box where the attach point and slot is entered, there is a choice of inflectional, derivational, and not sure. If you check the box for not sure, the affix info does not appear

For what it's worth,

Paul

[Paul Unger]

Of course, if you want that information to appear in a different version of the dictionary (one for linguists and anthropologists, say), you're kind of up the creek...

Paul

[Ron Moe]

It looks like this is an example of the challenge of trying to do dictionary production and parsing from a single database. There isn't anything wrong with doing two jobs with a single tool. The challenge comes when the needs conflict with each other. You can buy a crescent wrench for a one inch bolt and another wrench for a 25 millimeter bolt. Or you can buy one adjustable wrench and use it for both. The problem is that the adjustable wrench has to be adjustable so that it will fit both bolts. FLEx is usually adjustable, but you found a place where it isn't. So it's just a matter of making a feature request.

We need to be able to adjust the Configure-Dictionary tool so that we can export a suitable "Grammatical Info" label for affixes. Giving the parser information to a non-linguist dictionary user is inappropriate. We need to be able to specify the "Dictionary Grammatical Info Label" somewhere. In the "Create New Grammatical Info" box we need to be able to choose a "Dictionary Info" label in addition to the parser info. The user should be able to create these labels somewhere. Perhaps in the Grammar-Category Edit area there could be a place to specify affix labels. Or perhaps a new list is needed. I would like labels such as "Deriv.pfx." "V.sfx" etc. It may be possible to generate these automatically. The information should already be there. It would just be a matter of extracting it and putting it into the output.

There are other solutions to this problem. Some dictionaries do not have entries for affixes. Others do not give a grammatical info label for affixes. These should be options too.

These are just some thoughts off the top of my head. Someone needs to sit down with the programmers and think it through carefully. Perhaps others could give input-- What labels would you like to see for affixes?

-er sfx. A suffix added to the end of a verb to change it into a noun with the meaning, 'a person who does the action of the verb', such as build:builder, run:runner write:writer.

-er deriv.sfx. A suffix added...

-er A suffix added...

Ron Moe

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[Paul Unger]

Thanks for corroborating our experience, Ron. I'll make a feature request.

I do like how FLEx allows different Configure > Dictionary profiles! Having said that, adding a new profile is a bit counter-(to my)intuitive. From Help:

• [To] Add a custom view:

  Click the view you want to copy, and then click Copy. Then, configure that view.

In other words, don't start configuring your view and then expect to be able to 'save' it! 'Save'~create it first, and then configure it. Maybe that's another request... :-P

Paul

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