[developers] prefixation of multi word lexemes

Ann Copestake Ann.Copestake at cl.cam.ac.uk
Mon Aug 8 18:18:05 CEST 2005


This is a known effect of the treatment of affixation on MWEs ... I'd prefer
you didn't patch right now, since I'm thinking about it and intend to check in
some revised code.  I don't think always attaching to the left periphery is
correct, though, when we're talking about MWEs, at least assuming there are
languages where inflection involves prefixation.  For English, I think it would
probably be reasonable to disallow prefixation in MWEs entirely, and allow
suffixation at just one site, so I propose to make the approach flexible enough
to allow statements like this.  One thing I was considering was setting this up
to be done in the FSs rather than via increasingly complex globals and a
universal setting for the affixation position, but I think this would involve
something like having typed values for STEM.  (I think there are possible
reasons to make STEM more complex anyway, such as allowing for alternative
spellings of `colour' etc plus dialect, but this is something that should be
investigated on a small grammar first.)

Ann



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