Plains Cree morphological analyser

INTRODUCTION TO MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSER OF Plains Cree LANGUAGE.

Definitions for Multichar_Symbols

Analysis symbols

The morphological analyses of wordforms of Plains Cree are presented in this system in terms of the following symbols. (It is highly suggested to follow existing standards when adding new tags).

POS

• +N = Noun
• +V = Verb
• +Ipc = Indeclinable Particle
• +Prop
• +Adv
• +CC
• +CS
• +Interj
• +Phr
• +Pron
• +Num
• +Arab
• +Rom
• +PUNCT = punctuation symbols
• +LEFT = the left part of a paired punctuation symbol
• +RIGHT = the right part of a paired punctuation symbol
• +CLB = clause boundary symbols
• +Symbol = independent symbols in the text stream, like £, €, ©
• +ABBR

Nominal morphology

• +Loc Locative
• +Obv Obviative

• +Voc Vocative

• +Dim Diminutive

Particles

• +Def This is the intransitive demonstrative, i.e. the definite.

• +Indef Indefinite

• +Dem Demonstrative
• +Prox Demonstrative Proximate
• +Med Demonstrative Medial
• +Dist Demonstrative Distal
• +Pers = personal pronouns? At least it seems so based on the code
• +Interr Interrogative (who/whose/what/what kind)
• +Foc Focus particle

ordinals

Verbal MSP

• +Prs
• +Fut
• +Prt
• +Cnj
• +Int Future Intentional

• +Def Future Definite (TODO: okay to overlap with particle tag of the same name?)

• +Ind Indicative, aka Independent
• +Imp Imperative, consider deleting +Imp tag
• +Del Delayed imperative
• +Imm Immediate imperative, consider deleting +Imp tag

• +Cond TODO: Should Future Conditional be tagget Fut only? Conor: we will split the Future tags

• +1Sg first singular
• +2Sg etc

• +3Sg

• +1Pl 1Pl is exclusive plural (I, them, not you)
• +2Pl
• +3Pl
• +12Pl 12Pl is inclusive plural (I, you, …)
• +4Sg Fourth Person inanimate singlar (used only in the VII paradigms)
• +4Pl Fourth Person inanimate plural (used only in the VII paradigms)
• +4Sg/Pl

• +5Sg/Pl

• +1SgO objective conjugation
• +2SgO
• +2Sg/PlO Used in the syncretic 2sg/pl -> 1pl in the VTA paradigms
• +3SgO
• +SgO
• +1PlO
• +2PlO
• +12PlO
• +3PlO
• +PlO
• +4Sg/PlO ambiguous 4th person (both Singular and Plural)
• +5Sg/PlO ambiguous 5th person (both Singular and Plural)
• +X Unspecified actor forms Okimāsis p. 118

Person prefix fragment features

Nominal morphosyntactic features

• +Sg singular

• +Pl plural

• +Px1Sg person prefixes for nouns
• +Px2Sg
• +Px3Sg
• +Px4Sg
• +Px1Pl obviative
• +Px12Pl inclusive
• +Px2Pl
• +Px3Pl
• +Px4Pl

• +Der/Dim diminutive derivation

• RdplW+ Reduplication Type 1 (Weak)

• RdplS+ Reduplication Type 2 (Strong)

• +Der/Com Comitative circumfix (wîci-…-m)
• +Der/X VTI x-actor to VII-1

Verb conjugation (transitivity + animacy classes)

• +AI intransitive with animate subject,
• +II intransitive with inanimate subject,
• +TA transitive with animate object, and
• +TI transitive with inanimate object.

Noun animacy and dependency classes

• +A animate noun
• +I inanimate noun

• +D dependent noun

• +Qst yes-no question particle; cî
• +Neg negation; [na]môy[a].

Preverbs

Auxiliary symbols

These symbols either shape or govern the morphophonological structure

• %> suffix border
• %< prefix border

Symbols that need to be escaped on the lower side (towards twolc):

• »7: Literal »
• «7: Literal «

   %[%>%]  - Literal >
   %[%<%]  - Literal <
  

Special characters for morphophonology

• w2 non-collapsing glide, e.g. mowêw:mow2
• t2 Epenthetic -t- between person prefixes and vowel-initial stems
• t3 t to s in VTA-4
• t4 t:c in VTI-1 with unspecified actor
• y2 non-collapsing glide
• ý2 non-collapsing glide
• y3 epenthetic joiner in reduplication of vowel-initial stems

• i2 VTA-5i epenthesis.

• h2 Prefix in possessives

Triggers for various morphophonological phenomena Mostly, these are not realized themselves as any grapheme/phoneme

• %^EGLOT glottal stop after e, for eh- in conjunctive order

Usage tags

These tags distinguish different special-purpose analysers and generators from each other. Thus, for examples, we have normative and descriptive analysers, and generators for different purposes.

• +Err/Orth tag for substandard forms
• +Err/Frag tag for word-form fragments
• +Dial tag for dialectical forms that can’t be called errors
• +Use/NG not-generate, for ped generation isme-ped.fst
• +Eng indicates that this is an English form

Flagdiacritics

These are documented in Chapter 8 of Beesley/Karttunen, p. 456 zB.

For indicative, there are prefixes, so here we need one flag for each person-number combination. Note that for the inverse objective conjugation, the flag refers to the prefix, not to the subject. So indsg1 refers to either subject = 1Sg or object = 1Sg. The 3-3 forms are prefixless.

The conjunct form always has the ê- prefix, and future conditional never has a prefix.

• @U.verb.FutCon@ Future Conditional

Prefixes with a certain phonological content:

• @U.person.NULL@
• @U.person.NI@
• @U.person.KI@

Order

• @U.order.indep@ Independent
• @U.order.cnj@ Conjunct
• @U.order.imp@ Imperative

Tense

New multichar symbols for nouns

End of new and all Multichar_Symbols

LEXICON Root is where it all starts

• NOUN_PREFIXES ;
• NOUN_IRREGULARS ;
• NOUN_VOCATIVES ;
• VerbPrefixes ;
• Pronoun ;
• Propernouns ;
• Particles ;
• Numerals ;
• Abbreviation ;
• Punctuation ;
• Symbols ;
• NON_STANDARD ;

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This (part of) documentation was generated from src/fst/morphology/root.lexc