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Shoebox: Contraction Troubles

From:Arthaey Angosii <arthaey@...>
Date:Thursday, December 19, 2002, 9:45
I just got the Linguists Shoebox.  Great program.  But I'm having
difficulty parsing something in my language.  Perhaps someone here could
help me?

I have the phrase |n'om| which is made up of |ne no -im|.  |ne| marks
whatever follows it as an object.  |no| means "it."  |-im| is the
plural-marker, which drops its "i" if the word it attaches to ends with a
vowel.  Only when |ne| is followed by |no| (or |nom|) does it contract to
|n'| (and its pronunciation is lengthed, but Shoebox doesn't care about
that detail).

I have the following entries in my lexicon:

\lx ne
\ge OBJ
\a  n'-
\u  ne

\lx no
\ge it
\a  o
\u  no

\lx -im
\ge PL
\a  -m
\u  o+im

Shoebox parses |n'om| as "ne  no - no -im" and translates it as "OBJ it -
it -PL".  What I want it to do is parse it as "ne no -im" and translate it
as "OBJ it -PL".  How can I best deal with this situation?


--
AA

Replies

taliesin the storyteller <taliesin@...>
Arthaey Angosii <arthaey@...>
Joseph Fatula <fatula3@...>