Morph Type issues

[Ian]

I am almost certain this was discussed before, but, most likely, I am not well enough acquainted with the terminology to find the proper discussion. I am not a linguist, rather, just a language enthusiast and I am trying to put together several rarely used dictionaries in my language into one big database using FLex. 
My problem is, my language is inflected and this makes me uncertain in choosing the Morph type. For example, the stems of many nouns,  all verbs and adjectives are followed by an postfix indicating gender and case. So the headword is frequently not just a stem, but a stem followed by such a postfix. For example, the word for "nimble" is "sprytny". So "sprytn" is the stem and the "y" is the postfix indicating that the word is masculine and in the nominative. 
In this case, what should I choose in the morph type?

Kind regards,
J.

[Kevin Warfel]

I'm not sure if I'm understanding with absolute clarity what your objectives are, so my response may not be the right one. Are you making entries for every inflected form (masc nom, fem nom, masc acc, fem acc, etc.), or are you using the masculine nominative form as representative for all of those? The latter is how dictionaries are typically done, but your use case may be different. 

If you're wondering how to make a single representative entry for "nimble", it should look something like this:

The Lexeme Form field contains the stem, but since that form is nonsensical in isolation to a speaker of the language, the representative inflected form is entered in the Citation Form field. This provides a headword that native speakers recognize as a legitimate and well-formed word, while informing FLEx that the stem does not include the final "y". 

The suffix -y would constitute a separate entry, where information is provided about which sort(s) of stem(s) it attaches to and in which position in the structure of the word, like this:

It is then possible to use this information to analyze words in texts into the constituent elements:

Does that help?

Kevin

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[Ian]

Dear Kevin,

Thank you very much. This does answer my question and resolve a large part of my basic doubts. I am using the usual approach of using the masculine nominative form as the headword. The users of the language usually can intuitively adjust the word with the correct case and gender suffixes. I suspected that the approach you are illustrating is the correct one, but was somehow arrested by doubts and, honestly, the amount of work this would require. There is not a small a number of declination paradigms in the language, three genders, seven cases etc... Well, I guess it cannot be avoided. I never expected this effort to be easy. 

However, if I may, I will ask a slightly more detailed question regarding rather the strategy of putting the dictionary together.  The language I am trying to document is also agglutinative. If we take the word "sprytny" again, while "sprytn" is the stem, the root is "pryt", which stands for the general notion quickness and adroitness, "n" is the suffix which turns this into an adjective. The "s" prefix has many meanings but in this case, I would say, it denotes the category of accomplishment, completeness. Now, my understanding of properly handling this in FLex is that I still make an entry for the "sprytn" stem and other stems, but in the later stage proceed to document the finer morphemes which make them up. Is this, in your opinion, a sound approach?

Kind regards,

Jan  

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[Kevin Warfel]

Jan,

Languages are complex. Describing complex elements typically involves complex mechanisms, so yeah, describing three genders and seven cases requires a certain amount of work. But the good news is that FLEx makes this as easy as it can be, I think. Instead of having to create 21 different features to account for every possible combination, you can limit the number to 10 (3 gender + 7 case), then combine them as required for each lexical element where they apply.

From your description of s- and -n, I would say that they are stem-forming affixes ("derivational" in FLEx) and merit independent entries in your lexicon. But as you say, "sprytn", the stem formed via a sequence of derivations, can be included in the lexicon as well. In languages where there are numerous stem-forming affixes at work, the lexicographer is often inclined to include many of those "derived stems" as separate entries in the lexicon, and the "Stem-based" view is an appealing option for the presentation of these entries in a formatted dictionary.

With entries added in the lexicon for pryt, spryt, sprytn, s-, -n, and -y, the word "sprytny" can be analyzed in a text in multiple ways. Here are some of them:

Best wishes,

Kevin

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[Ian]

Dear Kevin,

This is very helpful, thank you! The various approaches to analysis you gave as examples are greatly helping me get a clear understanding of how I should proceed. 

Kind regards,

Ivan

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