Variant form characterized by a complex feature combination not offered in the catalog

[Eric Jackson]

I'm working with a community to set up a FLEx project, and the language of this community has a complex paradigm of number marking for both nouns and verbs. I believe that what I need to do in FLEx is to represent this with a complex feature that represents a combination of two other features which do occur in FLEx's grammatical feature catalog, namely number and distributivity. However, I can't seem to get the distributivity feature to show up as an option to be combined with a number feature, and in trying to create a custom complex feature, I can't seem to specify that those are the two features that should go together. Following are some more details on what I'm trying to model in the language; can someone point me in the right direction?

Starting just with nouns, there are several different singular and "plural-like" forms, with the following meanings:

	NUMBER
DISTRIBUTIVITY	singular	plural	(mass/unspecified)
local	one object in one location	several objects in one location	mass in one location
distributed	several locations with one object each	several locations with several objects each	several locations with mass
(unspecified)	(same as singular+local)	several objects (locations unspecified)

From the table, you can see that I think I can specify all the forms I need to just with combinations of two features (distributivity and number), each of which has two values (or is unspecified). Singular and plural are feature values that show up under noun agreement (even though what I'm working with is simply number marking, not number agreement, I think this is close enough that it would let me do what I need to do).

Distributivity (at least the same term) is a feature that shows up in FLEx's catalog, but under verb aspect (ie, like iterative event interpretations, though I think FLEx's explanation there is too narrow that it must involve iterative interpretations rather than possibly parallel events in different locations), not having to do with nouns and number.

So, if I try to use the Inflectional Affix Gloss Builder, sure, I can select a "noun-related feature" and a "verb-related feature" to mark something as singular-distributive, but that seems a bit klugey. I would rather be able to clearly indicate that these are both noun-related features. 

From my understanding, it seems like the appropriate way to mark this would be to create a complex feature, named something like "Number and distributivity marking", and tell FLEx that in addition to the simple feature "Number" (which FLEx has in its catalog), there's also a simple feature "Distributivity," which is related to whether an entity exists in one location or more than one location. Something like this:

I would then like to say that the category Noun can be inflectable for one of these combinations of Number and Distributivity via that complex feature, but when I try to do so, I can't specify what the actual combinations of that complex feature are.

Where do I need to look to tell FLEx that the complex number/distributivity feature should represent values from the existing Number feature and Distributivity feature?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Warmly,

Eric

Eric Jackson

Removing technical barriers to language development for data-scarce language communities

LinkedIn  |  Academia.edu  |  GitHub

[Andy Black]

Hi, Eric.

Thank you for getting me a copy of your project (off list).

Try the following and see if this gives you what you want:

1. Go to Lists / Feature Types.
2. Click on "Number and distributivity" (your complex feature)
3. Click on the 'Features" chooser.
4. Select just number and distributivity:
   
5. Go to Grammar / Category / Noun
6. Click on the Features chooser.
7. Select just "number / distributivity..." (your complex feature)
   
8. Now go to a nominal Lexical entry.
9. Click on the Show Hidden Fields checkbox at the top and scroll down to the Grammatical Indo. Details portion.
10. Click on the Inflection Features chooser.
    
11. Select the values needed for distributivity and number for this entry

Is that more like what you were seeking?

If so, the idea is to create the features needed (distributivity and number in this case). Then create the complex feature and assign it to use the two features it needs.  Finally, make the category's inflection features be set to this complex feature.

As for the question on mass vs. count nouns, I suggest you ask that to the group in a separate thread.

--Andy

On 8/7/2025 10:27 AM, Eric Jackson wrote:

Thank you, Andy. Yes, here's a backup of the project so far.

Prior to this morning, I hadn't yet had time to enter all of the example nouns to represent each class, but I just went through and tried to do that -- and maybe with restarting FLEx, I ended up being able to get the combination I needed?

I think I'd also like to formally indicate whether a noun is count or mass as part of the specificatoin of semantic interpretation of these forms, but that should be, I think, within the sense information, and the only built-in field that I think would make sense for that kind of information within a Sense block would be to create a subclass of Noun as a grammatical Category. I haven't been able to find a good discussion online of how the mass/count distinction is handled within FLEx, but would creating subclasses of nouns be the typical way to approach that?

Thank you in advance for your help and advice!

Warmly,

Eric

Eric Jackson

Removing technical barriers to language development for data-scarce language communities

LinkedIn  |  Academia.edu  |  GitHub

On Thu, Aug 7, 2025 at 9:16 AM Andy Black <blackh...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, Eric.

Would you be willing to make a backup of your project and email it to me?  I'll take a look at it and see if we can come up with what is needed.

Thanks,

--Andy

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[Eric Jackson]

Thank you, Andy! This was precisely what I needed -- I can now see the options I'm expecting.

Warmly,

Eric

Eric Jackson

Removing technical barriers to language development for data-scarce language communities

LinkedIn  |  Academia.edu  |  GitHub