Forming Verb Paradigms that Export to Pathways Lexicon Easily

[Carson Viles]

Hi all,

Hope you're well! I am working on a project at the Northwest Indian Language Institute at the University of Oregon, and we're struggling to find a way to format verb paradigms easily for export to a English-Athabaskan and Athabaskan-English lexicon (potentially by using Pathways). We have tried using lexical variant and complex forms, to varying degrees of success. Our main problem using those fields has been the amount of clicks it takes to get an entry to format correctly when exported. We're also focused on making the lexicon learner-friendly.

Using lexical variants has been a struggle as the field appears to be creating hyperlinked/related entries when exporting through pathways. It also doesn't seem possible to create verb paradigms that are tabbed down onto the next line, e.g.

go

I go
you go
s/he/it goes

My latest idea has been to create a dummy entry for the verb paradigms that features a custom field formatted to multi-line paragraph type and tagged as a custom grammatical category "verb paradigm". My idea was that this would allow us to add these entries to the Athabaskan-English section of the lexicon and easily format the paradigms in the paragraph field without having to wade through linking entries, which has been very helpful for linguistic analysis but has been a struggle when it comes to formatting. However, this solution seems really clumsy, as it would involve adding simple entries for each verb form, e.g. I go, you go, we go, and a separate verb paradigm entry "to go" with the custom field featuring a verb paradigm.

To summarize, I'm looking for support from anyone else working on languages that have complicated verb conjugation that relies on infixes which occur in sometimes unpredictable slots within the verb, frequently involve stem changes, can be highly irregular, and involve singular, plural and dual inflection. Our ideal would be to have a lexicon that features Ath-Eng verb entries that would look roughly like:

na'-'a to talk

1s na'sh-'a I talk
2s naa-ch'ii-'a you talk
3s
1d
2d
1p
2p

Thanks so much to anyone who can chime in!

Carson

[Beth-docs Bryson]

Carson-

For other agglutinating languages, we have used Complex Forms for this.  Technically, the Complex Form mechanism is really intended for derivation, not for inflection.  However, from a formatting perspective, it looks to me like you want each inflected form to appear as a kind of subentry under the main entry.  

You said you have already tried complex forms and ran into issues.  I would be interested in talking with you off-list about what issues you ran into.

The last time I visited NWILI we were trying to using complex forms for something like this, and there were problems with some of them not showing for what seemed like no reason at the time.  Since then we have done more work on FLEx in the area of Complex Forms, and my guess is that whatever was happening then, is no longer happening in FW 8.3.x.

You said you want the inflected forms listed in their own paragraphs inside the main entry.  Do you have anything else with them?  Do you give the English gloss of the inflected form (that is all you’ve shown in the message below)?  Do you have any example sentences, or audio?  An audio writing system would be a great way to make the audio of these inflected forms and/or related example sentences accessible to users.

Feel free to contact me off-list.

-Beth

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[Jeff Shrum]

Maybe you should use stem names to organize your data.  Stem names are like dummy forms to use your term. I have used them with great success for irregular Portuguese verbs and Afro-asiatic languages.

 

Choose a Stem Name

In Lexicon Edit, there are more than one Stem Name fields:

• Stem Name under Allomorphs (for stem allomorphs)
• Stem Name under the Lexeme Form field (for non-affix Morph Types)
• From Stem Name under Grammatical Info Details (for derivational affixes).

The topic Insert a Stem Name has important information about Stem Names. Use the appropriate field when you choose a Stem Name.

1. In the Navigation Pane, click Lexicon, and then click Lexicon Edit.
2. In the Entries column, click the desired entry.
3. In the Entry pane, if you cannot see the appropriate Stem Name or From Stem Name field, show hidden fields.
4. Click the appropriate field, and then click the ellipsis button () that appears.

The Choose Stem Name dialog box appears.

5. Do any of the following:
• To see how many times each Stem Name has been used in the project, select the Display usage figures check box.
• Click a Stem Name, and then click OK.
• Choose <Empty>, and then click OK to remove an existing Stem Name.
• If the Stem Name you want is not listed, click the Edit the Stem Names for categories link so you can insert a Stem Name.

Related Topics

Category Edit overview

Lexicon Edit overview

Jeff Shrum

SIL International

Language Technology Consultant

Dallas, TX USA

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[Jeff Shrum]

Carson,

 

I have an example from Portuguese using stem names.  If you want the irregular stems to appear in dictionary as subentries then do not check the “Is abstract form” check box as I have done. Stem names are created in the Allomorph section.  In the below example I created stem names for “imperative” and “future subjunctive”.

 

In Portuguese the imperative is formed by using the stem from present tense first person singular.  

 

              ver = “see”

              vejo= “I see”

              vej*= imperative stem

 

The future subjunctive (conjunctivo) for “ver” is formed from the irregular stem “vir”, or vir+person-number-suffix

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With configuration the parser can learn to form imperative and future subjunctive forms of the irregular verb “ver”.

 

 

 

Jeff Shrum

SIL International

Language Technology Consultant

7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road

Dallas, TX 75236

Office: 972-708-7400. Ext: 2030

Cell: 903-371-0297

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[Carson Viles]

Jeff,

Thanks for the input here! I'll try experimenting with that, as well. The pattern for Tututni is for perfective verb stems to change form, so I may be able to do something similar.

[Hugh Paterson]

@Beth,

There is still an open JIRA  ticket to have verb paradigms  (and noun paradigms) with languages with fusional morphology. (from when I was working in Me'phaa [tpx]) from 2010.

- Hugh

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[Jeff Shrum]

Carson,

 

I have tried making a stem-based dictionary for verbs whose stems change using the “stem name” feature and creating custom irregularly inflected variants.  I think making custom variant types probably works better than creating custom “stem names”.  Stem names work well with the parser, but have limited formatting options for the printed dictionary. You can decide. If you need more details on creating variant types look in Help, or I can answer questions that you have.

 

Dictionary entry using stem names for imperative and future subjunctive:

 

 

Dictionary entries using custom irregularly inflected variant types for imperative and future subjunctive:

 

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