Development ideas for dictionary format

The idea of this page is to collect ideas for how to expand the Apertium .dix format such that it could be a drop-in replacement for lexc. Currently it has many advantages over lexc: Convenient / easy validation, more restrictive syntax, support for multiword queues and inbuilt support for analysis/generation restrictions. The problem is that it doesn't support some useful features that lexc has, or not comfortably. Also it would be desirable to standardise on some of the typical lexc stuff, e.g. one way of writing the morpheme boundary, not 100.

Archiphonemes

Perhaps use entities ?

The option of just using <s> is pretty much out,

<e><p><l><s n="pron"/></l><r><s n="L"/><s n="A"/><s n="G"/><s n="I"/></r></p><par n="CASE"/></e>

For

%<pron%>:%>%{L%}%{I%}%{K%}%{I%} CASE ;

Something like:

<e><p><l><s n="pron"/></l><r>&L;&A;&G;&I;</r></p><par n="CASE"/></e>

Might be liveable ? These would then be converted by the compiler into {L}{A}{G}{I} tags ?

Further reading: 2.5 Entities

Morpheme boundary

Current tags:

• <a> = "alarm"
• <s> = "symbol"
• <b> = "blank"
• <j> = "join"
• <g> = "group"

It's desirable that it be a single letter.

Available: c d f h k m n o q t u v w x y z

Flags

@P.NEG.0@   ! Set if -{I}š is not present
@P.NEG.1@   ! Set if -{I}š is present
@D.NEG.0@   ! Disallow if -{I}š is not present
@D.NEG.1@   ! Disallow if -{I}š is present

LEXICON V-PERS-PRES ! P_6

@D.NEG.1@%<p1%>%<sg%>:@D.NEG.1@%>м # ;
@D.NEG.1@%<p2%>%<sg%>:@D.NEG.1@%>с%{I%}ң # ;

LEXICON V-INFL-FINITE
%<aor%>:%>%{E%} V-PERS-PRES ;     

LEXICON V-INFL-COMMON-SECOND

V-INFL-FINITE ;
@D.NEG.1@:@D.NEG.1@ V-INFL-NON-FINITE ;

LEXICON V-INFL-COMMON

V-INFL-COMMON-SECOND ;
@P.NEG.1@:%>%{I%}ш@P.NEG.1@ V-INFL-COMMON-SECOND ; ! Dir/LR
%<coop%>:%>%{I%}ш V-INFL-COMMON-SECOND ;

<pardef n="V-INFL-COMMON">
  <e>        <par n="V-INFL-COMMON-SECOND"/></e>
  <e r="LR"><f n="neg"/><p><l><m/>&I;ш</l><r><s n="coop"/></r></p></f></e>
  <e>       <p><l><m/>&I;ш</l><r><s n="coop"/></r></p></e>
</pardef>

Further reading

• Anssi Yli-Jyrä (2011) "Explorations on Positionwise Flag Diacritics in Finite-State Morphology". NODALIDA
  • This paper adds flag diacritics for implementing morphophonology to a single-tape (e.g. like lttoolbox, no intersect/compose) finite-state transducer.