variant forms for plurals

[Mariacarmela Flaviano]

Hello everyone,  
I am not a pro user of Flex. I am compiling a small dictionary from my corpus of texts. When it comes to irregular plural forms, I created a variant form for the plural and linked it to the singular form. When going to the analyses section, the plural form is linked to the singular but with "+***" next to it (screenshot attached) . What does this "+***" mean?   Am I making some mistakes? 


Thank you in advance, 
Maria

[Andreas_Joswig]

Hi Maria,

You are doing most everything right. All that is missing is an abbreviation for your variant type, such as "pl". Once you add that, the three stars should be replaced by the abbreviation.

There is, btw, a pre-defined variant type for plural forms, somewhat hidden among the "irregularly inflected forms". So you could have also used that variant type, which comes with the added benefit of adding ".pl" to the gloss of the stem.

Best wishes,

Andreas

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[Mariacarmela Flaviano]

hank you, Andreas, for your reply. After thinking about it, I realised I have another question/problem with variants.

In the analysis section, I followed the same process for some irregular verb stems. I linked the stem to the headword that I want to appear in the dictionary. However, when I go to the headword in the lexicon section and right-click on it to see the concordances, I get no results. It seems my headword is not linked to the stem variant.

I attach another screenshot: arfez is the perfective stem of the verb erfez. I analysed this form accordingly. But when I go to the headword erfez in the lexicon and try to see the concordances, nothing appears.

Does anyone know why this happens?

Thank you very much, 

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[Françoise Rose]

If you search concordance at the entry level, it looks only for the basic form (and allomorphs), not for variants.

For you search to have scope on variants, you have to do the search at the sense level. This has been a big inconvenient for me, this is why in general I would not strongly recommend to use variants.

 

De : flex...@googlegroups.com <flex...@googlegroups.com> De la part de Mariacarmela Flaviano
Envoyé : mardi 26 août 2025 17:54
À : flex...@googlegroups.com
Objet : Re: [FLEx] variant forms for plurals

 

hank you, Andreas, for your reply. After thinking about it, I realised I have another question/problem with variants.

In the analysis section, I followed the same process for some irregular verb stems. I linked the stem to the headword that I want to appear in the dictionary. However, when I go to the headword in the lexicon section and right-click on it to see the concordances, I get no results. It seems my headword is not linked to the stem variant.

I attach another screenshot: arfez is the perfective stem of the verb erfez. I analysed this form accordingly. But when I go to the headword erfez in the lexicon and try to see the concordances, nothing appears.

Does anyone know why this happens?

Thank you very much, 

 

Il giorno mar 26 ago 2025 alle ore 17:29 'Andreas_Joswig' via FLEx list <flex...@googlegroups.com> ha scritto:

Hi Maria,

You are doing most everything right. All that is missing is an abbreviation for your variant type, such as "pl". Once you add that, the three stars should be replaced by the abbreviation.

There is, btw, a pre-defined variant type for plural forms, somewhat hidden among the "irregularly inflected forms". So you could have also used that variant type, which comes with the added benefit of adding ".pl" to the gloss of the stem.

Best wishes,

Andreas

 

 

On 8/26/2025 5:16 PM, Mariacarmela Flaviano wrote:

Hello everyone,  
I am not a pro user of Flex. I am compiling a small dictionary from my corpus of texts. When it comes to irregular plural forms, I created a variant form for the plural and linked it to the singular form. When going to the analyses section, the plural form is linked to the singular but with "+***" next to it (screenshot attached) . What does this "+***" mean?   Am I making some mistakes? 


Thank you in advance, 
Maria

 

 

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[Mariacarmela Flaviano]

Thank you, Françoise, for your helpful reply. What would you suggest I do in order to avoid using variants, but still link the two forms and be able to search the concordances later?

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[Françoise Rose]

I don’t have any good recommendation for you regarding morphological variants.

But in case of phonological variants, if not using the Hermit Crab parser, I would definitively recommend to have the as allomorphs.

 

De : flex...@googlegroups.com <flex...@googlegroups.com> De la part de Mariacarmela Flaviano

Envoyé : mardi 26 août 2025 18:07

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[chris...@sil.org]

Hi Maria,

The Fieldworks team now has a well-informed chatbot that is trained on an extensive collection of Fieldworks documentation.  I encourage all Fieldworks users to give it a try here:  https://software.sil.org/fieldworks/agent/

I asked your question to the chatbot and here's what it said, FWIW:

Hi Maria,

Great questions! You’re not alone—many users run into similar issues when working with variants and concordances in FLEx.

Why Concordances Don’t Show for Variants

When you right-click a headword in the Lexicon and choose “Show Concordance,” FLEx only searches for the main form (the lexeme) and its allomorphs. It does not automatically include variant forms (like irregular stems or plurals) in this search. That’s why you don’t see results for your stem variant (e.g., arfez as a stem of erfez) in the concordance for the headword.

What Can You Do?

• If you want both forms to be searchable together in concordances:
  The best workaround is to add the irregular stem as an allomorph of the main entry, rather than as a variant. Allomorphs are included in concordance searches for the entry, so this will link the forms for searching purposes.

  • To do this, open the main entry (e.g., erfez), go to the “Lexeme” section, and add the stem (e.g., arfez) as an allomorph.
  • This is especially recommended for phonological or suppletive forms, and is a common practice unless you are using the Hermit Crab parser for more advanced morphological analysis.

• If you need to keep them as variants:
  You can still find concordances for the variant form, but you’ll need to search for it directly, or at the sense level, rather than expecting it to be included with the headword’s concordance.

Summary

• Use allomorphs for forms you want included in headword concordances.
• Use variants for forms that are related but don’t need to be included in the same concordance search.
• For more on this, see the LEX101 guide: https://sites.google.com/sil.org/dls-lex101/