Re: [FLEx] Ordering affix slots within a templates

[A Walker Scott]

I had been told that ordering my affix slots wasn't possible when I asked some time ago, but Beth's comment below makes it sound like maybe it is now? To be clear, I'm asking about derivational morphemes in a highly agglutinative language, not inflectional morphemes. Well actually a mixture of the two.

Adam

On Thursday, October 30, 2025, 'Beth-docs Bryson' via FLEx list <flex...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

As Kevin noted, you can indeed order the affixes within a slot.  It is new in 9.3.x.  I recommend getting the latest Alpha version (9.3.3), since there were a number of bug fixes between 9.3.0 and 9.3.3.  Do read the Release Notes for the Alpha version, to see what other things were added compared to 9.2.11.

You right-click on an affix in a slot, and then choose "Move Up" or "Move Down".  It can be tedious because you have to do that once for each position that you want to move it, but it is satisfying when they finally appear in a logical order.

For me, the reasons include: listing them in an order that makes sense (e.g., Sg before Pl), and listing them in an order that enables me to verify that "everything that should be there, is there".  When there are a lot of affixes in one slot (e.g., for Bantu noun class markers), it is hard to tell if they are all there if they are in random order.

In terms of moving the whole slot, yes, you can also move the slots around.  If you right-click on the name of the slot, you can "Move <slotname> forward one slot".  But the OP was asking about affixes within a slot, not slots within a template.

-Beth

On Thu, Oct 30, 2025 at 5:24 PM 'Andreas_Joswig' via FLEx list <flex...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Mike,
Of course the slots are ordered inside a template, but below the
templates is a list of all the available affix slots for that category.
This is arranged by the order of entry, the latest entry being at the
bottom of the list. If you have many of these slots, you may want to
order them in a more useful or intuitive way, and I suspect that this is
what the OP is asking about.
And no, as far as I know, you cannot do that easily in the new alpha
version. The thing that is new there is that you can duplicate a slot
and then move it to a different category, which can be very useful for
example in Bantu languages, where you have similar slots with very
similar affixes for nouns, adjectives, pronouns etc. But I don't think
you can change the relative order of the slots within a category.
Andreas

On 10/30/2025 7:54 AM, Mike Maxwell wrote:
> Kevin (off-line), I was tempted to ask the OP why he wanted to do
> this. The slots are of course ordered, as are listed allomorphs of a
> single affix, while the affixes in a given are by definition things
> that don't mutually occur, so ordering them seems to me pointless. 
> But apparently some people have found a reason for doing this.  What
> is it?
>
>    Mike Maxwell
>
> On 10/29/25 19:41, kevin_warfel via FLEx list wrote:
>> This feature has been implemented, starting with FW 9.3.0, I believe.
>> That version is still labeled “Alpha,” but I have had good
>> experiences working with it. As a precaution, you may want to do
>> Send/Receive (for a project shared on Lexbox) or make backups (for
>> independent projects) more frequently than you typically do, if you
>> decide to give FW 9.3 a try at this moment.
>>
>> FW 9.3 is available via https://software.sil.org/fieldworks/download/.
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Kevin Warfel
>>
>> *From:* flex...@googlegroups.com <flex...@googlegroups.com> *On
>> Behalf Of *jonathan...@gmail.com
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, October 29, 2025 5:10 PM
>> *To:* FLEx list <flex...@googlegroups.com>
>> *Subject:* [FLEx] Ordering affixes within a slot in the affix templates
>>
>> Is there a way to order the affixes in the templates?
>>
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[Beth-docs Bryson]

I was referring to the position of the slots in the inflectional morpheme template.  I haven't tested to see if it affects the order they appear in when they are listed below the template.

Also, normally only inflectional affixes appear in a morpheme template.  Derivational processes are not handled by means of a template, but by expressing what they attach to and turn something into.  This distinction is based on linguistic tendencies.  (There is a specific way to have a layer of inflection, followed by a layer of derivation, followed by a layer of inflection, but this is rare.)

If you have derivational affixes and you tell FLEx that they are inflectional, you could get them into the template, but this may or may not be effective for how your language works.

-Beth

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