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Re: [SHOEBOX] "Morphophonemic form gives cyclical pattern..."

From:The Gray Wizard <dbell@...>
Date:Sunday, July 23, 2000, 10:51
> From: Josh > > Hi all. Josh here. > > Okay. I was able to set up interlinearization that recognizes > conjugated word forms and it is working quite nicely. In fact, I'm pretty > excited--this is the most organized Kartesian has been since its creation.
It does get your conlinguistic juices running. I had originally fired it up as a possible store for the rather extensive lexicon that has grown around amman iar. I wasn't particularly keen about facing the tedious chore of typing each and every lexical entry into Shoebox, so I approached it with more that a bit of skepticism about my willingness to do so. Interlinearization changed that. Instead of typing isolated lexical entries, I type in whole sentences and phrases and collect the necessary lexical entries as I go. This has turned out to be a far more interesting exercise.
> But now I am presented with a problem AGAIN. Upon interlinearizing, > many times a message pops up that says, "Morphophonemic form gives > cyclical pattern..." And that is EXACTLY what it does. It parses a word > giving it an endless cycle of alternating INCORRECT morphemes... why is > it doing this? Has anyone else received this annoying message? Let me > know.
Haven't seen that error. In fact, I haven't seen a single error message since I started using this thing. It sounds like you may have a recursive lexical definition somewhere. Something where an underlying form refers to a surface form that itself has an underlying form referring back to the original entry. Shoebox wouldn't know where to end the parse. Try parsing it manually and see where it leads you.
> Also, I was wondering if it was possible to restrict certain > underlying morphophonemic changes to specific PARTS OF SPEECH. Because of > the common use of various affixes for more than one reason (the affix -ee > has about five DIFFERENT uses which always clog up the Ambiguity menu), > things tend to get messy. Also, is it possible that this is the reason > I'm getting that nasty message I spoke of earlier? I hope so, and I hope > that there is a way to restrict underlying forms.
Yes, this is on my wish list as well, but I can't see how this alone would lead to your cyclical error. Unless our Master Shoeboxer, Jeff, can come up with something, however, I think this one will remain on the wish list. I have however been toying with turning this problem into a "feature" I have begun to envision a development of the language in which this kind of ambiguity is reduced to a minimum. I could use Shoebox interliearization to identify the ambiguities and "evolve" them away in the new form of the language. David David E. Bell The Gray Wizard dbell@graywizard.net www.graywizard.net "Wisdom begins in wonder." - Socrates