Inflection class and inflection feature

[Stuart Showalter]

I'm trying to refine the dictionary for Kaansa [gna], which is a Gur language of Burkina Faso with seven noun classes (4 genders).  I'm trying to understand the difference in Flex between inflection class and inflection feature, but I'm not getting any help from the help files.  I also have not yet found a decent discussion of these two things on this group.  Has anything been written that compares the two and helps pour souls like me figure out when to use one and when to use the other?

Thanks.

Stuart Showalter

[Marlon Hovland]

We you able to learn about this from the Introduction to Morphological Parsing which is available on the Help menu?

 

Marlon

--
You are subscribed to the publicly accessible group "FLEx list".
Only members can post but anyone can view messages on the website.
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "FLEx list" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to flex-list+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to flex...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/flex-list/a5abc6f6-3f41-4433-b1ff-4caf479e9c1b%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Jeff Shrum]

Stuart,

 

I would also recommend that you read the guide to parsing  that is under the help menu.  I have pasted a portion below.

 

How do we handle this kind of allomorphy when the choice of allomorphs is not motivated by the phonological environment but by the choice of the lexical stem? The FieldWorks Language Explorer approach is to use inflection classes. An inflection class is “a set of lexemes whose members each have the same type of inflectional forms” Aronoff (1994:64). They correspond to the traditional idea of declension classes or conjugation classes. For Yalálag Zapotec, we would create two inflection classes at the top-level verb category (so that it applies to verb and all sub-categories of verb; see section 2.1.2.6.2). One class would be for stems that select the u‑ allomorph and the other would be for those that take the “fortifier” :‑ allomorph.

 

If I understand it correctly, inflectional classes are for forms that are truly inflected, while marking nouns for number is not quite the same and inflectional features are used for marking number on nouns.

 

In Bantu languages inflectional features are used for noun class markers.

 

Recently, I taught a class where we parsed a Nilo-Saharan language where the nouns had gender, number and irregular plurals.  I used the morph type "irregularly inflected plurals" for many of the nouns and that works fine.  I am still editing the modules but I could send the ones dealing with noun class, gender and number off list if you wish, but there may still be some typo's in it.

 

Jeff Shrum

Language Technology Consultant (SOA)

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/flex-list/4ffb00ad20320a98a05c0eda7e6e1c0b%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stuart Showalter]

Perhaps it's figuring out the best way to deal with the noun class system in Kaansa.

A noun root can be said to belong to a gender, which normally takes a singular noun class suffix and a plural noun class suffix.  I'm guessing that the gender would be the Inflection Class whereas the noun class suffixes are inflection features.  However, the noun class suffixes are not simply singular and plural, they can also express ideas of abstractness or ugliness.  Some noun roots can belong to more than one gender, like the root for "thing" which can belong to the animate gender, the small gender, and the large gender, so that particular root can take up to 6 different class suffixes. Can Flex handle that kind of variety for a single dictionary entry for "taa" ?  If so, how exactly?

Then there are the noun roots that take only one class suffix, such as tree species, which take the plural animate suffix, but are not plural, more an abstract notion of the essence of that kind of tree.

Also, Flex does not seem to allow me to mark that roots can be associated with more than one noun class marker (as an inflection feature), when in fact most of them can be.

I appreciate your help.

Stuart

[Andy Black]

Stuart:

Section 2.1.2.8 "Inflection Classes versus Inflection Features" in the conceptual introduction to parsing document suggests using inflection features for noun classes or gender.  This section might be of help to you.

--Andy

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/flex-list/03fad5f3-7d6b-4b9b-b6db-22ac2180f61e%40googlegroups.com.

[Andy Black]

I forgot to mention that
http://tiki.lingtransoft.info/Modeling+Bantu+Noun+Classes?structure=Navmenu
also might be of use to you.

--Andy

[maxwell]

> Section 2.1.2.8 "Inflection Classes versus Inflection Features" in
> the conceptual introduction to parsing document suggests using
> inflection features for noun classes or gender.

I'll just add a note to Andy's. Linguistically speaking, and therefore
in the FLEx model of morphology, inflection classes are by definition
things that don't trigger or get selected by agreement, whereas
inflection features often do trigger agreement, or have other
morphosyntactic implications beyond the selection of affixes on the
stem. So gender (and noun classes in Bantu languages) is generally
treated as inflectional features, not as inflection classes.

Examples of inflection classes are declension classes on nouns and
adjectives in Latin and German (as distinct in both languages from
gender, an inflectional feature), or conjugation classes on verbs in
modern Romance languages.
--
Mike Maxwell
max...@umiacs.umd.edu
"I cannot believe that our existence in this universe
is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an
incidental blip in the great cosmic drama. Our
involvement is too intimate. The physical species
Homo may count for nothing, but the existence of
mind in some organism on some planet in the universe
is surely a fact of fundamental significance. Through
conscious beings the universe has generated
self-awareness." --Paul Davies