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

> 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