Yes, that should work. But it's almost certainly not what you want. Please have a closer look at Kevin's message and part 2 of my message.
Happy to discuss further or clarify anything that you didn't follow. -- Jonathan On Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 01:57 Zanga Chimombo <[email protected]> wrote: > Indeed mtengo<n><cl3><cl12><sg> produces the desired effect, thanks! > > On Wed, Aug 26, 2026 at 5:28 PM Jonathan Washington > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Hi Zanga, > > > > Two things come to mind: > > > > 1. If your analysis yields > > ^kamtengo/mtengo<n><cl3><cl12><sg>$ > > > > then to generate "kamtengo" it should basically look like exactly the > reverse of that: > > ^mtengo<n><cl3><cl12><sg>/kamtengo$ > > > > So you'd want to provide as input mtengo<n><cl3><cl12><sg>, not > mtengo<n><sg><cl12>. > > > > But: > > > > 2. In Bantu languages (on which I'm not am expert, so feel free correct > me if I get anything wrong) class is a lexical property of a noun and an > inflectional property of an adjective. If correct, that means that the > tags are subcategory tags for nouns and grammatical tags for adjectives. > See > https://wikis.swarthmore.edu/ling073/Grammar_documentation#Morphological_analyses > and the included diagram for more details on this. > > > > Whether or not this is the case, it doesn't really make sense to have > two class tags on a given noun or adjective. It would be like, if you > derive verbs into nouns (as in "I took a long _run_") or inflect verbs into > nouns (as in "_Running_ is part of my morning routine"), you wouldn't want > both a verb tag and a noun tag, because then all your downstream tools > would be confused about whether the word is a verb or a noun. There are a > couple reasonable alternatives here: > > a. use derivational and inflectional tags: run<v><iv><nmlz><sg>/run and > run<v><iv><vn>/running. (<nmlz> for "nominalised" and <vn> for "verbal > noun", but these aren't tags currently used by apertium-eng, and you could > use anything that makes sense here.) > > b. relexicalise the new words: run<n><sg>/run, running<n><sg>/running. > Here you treat the new form as a new word. Note that the lemma changes > here too (but wouldn't change further as those forms inflect). > > c. a good balance in this case might be to lexicalise the derived forms > and treat the inflected forms as inflected: run<n><sg>/run, > run<v><iv><vn>/running. > > > > In your case, I think you have a couple options too: > > a. Treat the derived forms as lexicalised (which come with new POS and > subcategory tags), so you'd have both mtengo<n><cl12> and mtengo<n><cl3> in > your lexicon, and both could take the full range of inflection. This looks > like it's in line with what Kevin suggests (and then disambiguate using CG > or similar if the forms are ambiguous). If all class 12 nouns do this, > then you might want to automate the derivation within your transducer so > you only have to enter each of these once. > > b. Treat the derived forms as inflection, for which you'd need a new > tag, like mtengo<n><cl12><dim> or mtengo<n><cl12><→cl3> or similar. > > c. Treat the inflection (locatives sound like they could be?) > differently than derivation (diminutives could probably be considered > either inflection or derivation) in this regard. > > > > > > I'll also add two things: > > > > - Languages with prefixational morphology are a lot easier to deal with > in lexd than lexc. > > > > - Usually matching the order of tags in adjectives (where noun > subcategory tags and noun grammatical tags are both grammatical tags) to > tags in nouns makes sense. So it'd be kakakulu/kulu<adj><cl12><sg>. > > > > -- > > Jonathan > > > > > > On Wed, Aug 26, 2026, 04:33 Kevin Brubeck Unhammer <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> > >> > There are certain classes of nouns in ciBantu which are derived from > >> > other nouns. Namely, dimunitives (classes 12 and 13) as well as > >> > locatives - on, at and in - (16, 17 and 18). I believe I have set up > >> > the noun morphotactics adequately > >> > > https://github.com/apertium/apertium-nya/blob/main/apertium-nya.nya.lexc > >> > and indeed it seems to analyze correctly: > >> > echo kamtengo kakakulu | lt-proc nya.automorf.bin > >> > ^kamtengo/mtengo<n><cl3><cl12><sg>$ ^kakakulu/kulu<adj><sg><cl12>$ > >> > >> Your analysis mtengo<n><cl3><cl12><sg> suggests that kamtengo is both > >> class 3 and class 12 at the same time. But then you say cl3 is dropped – > >> is there actually an ambiguity between cl3 and cl12? In that case, the > >> correct analysis should be > >> > >> $ echo kamtengo kakakulu | lt-proc nya.automorf.bin > >> ^kamtengo/mtengo<n><cl3><sg>/mtengo<n><cl12><sg>$ > ^kakakulu/kulu<adj><sg><cl12>$ > >> > >> If you have both mtengo<n><cl3><sg> and mtengo<n><cl12><sg> in your > >> lexc, then you should be able to generate mtengo<n><sg><cl12> as well. > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Apertium-stuff mailing list > >> [email protected] > >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/apertium-stuff > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Apertium-stuff mailing list > > [email protected] > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/apertium-stuff > > > _______________________________________________ > Apertium-stuff mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/apertium-stuff >
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