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Comments

number := *top*.
sg := number.
du := number.   
pl := number.


The directions specified a hierarchy which groups du and pl
together as non-sg.  This is very useful in translation when we
go between languages with a du and those without.  It would
also be useful in Arabic, as I assume that the so-called 1pl form
actually covers dual cases as well (that is, it can be used to
refer to two people, including the speaker).  In that case,
you would want its NUM value to be non-sg, not pl.

You've got some extra ambiguity coming in because your adjectives
can attach to NPs as well as N's --- attachment at NP will
give broken semantics, so take advantage of the MOD..SPR feature
to make them attach only at N'.

 First, I started simply by adding case to the verb-lex entries.
 Since the basic word orders are SVO and VSO, as I posted
 in the forums, I should be able to place case on the
 ARG-ST without worrying (too much) about reordering at
 this point.

I hope you will get the dependency between word order and verb
inflection (was it?) working, though.


 yins.arifu  lwaladu
 y-ins.arifu ?al-walad-u
 3MSG-leaves the-boy-NOM
 "The boy leaves"

Thank you for including these.

  ** (...looks like I'm not immune to the violent tendencies
      of grammar-writing linguists...)

The violence verbs tend to be so nicely transitive.  "Kiss" is
often a good substitute, though, or "see".

+nj :+ [ CASE case,
          FNT finiteness ] .

I hope that in Lab 6 you are replacing FNT with COG-ST.  For
adjectives, you'll want to have the lexical rules constrain the
COG-ST value of the thing inside their MOD.  (And you can do the
same thing for CASE, rather than give the adjectives a CASE value
of their own.)

Btw, "finiteness" is a term that's applied to verbs for the
distinction between "finite" and "infinitival".  "definiteness"
is what you meant, I think.

** Also, with regards to my rules, I currently have the case
   ending being applied as the innermost rule, and as a
   infl-add-only-no-ccont-ltol-rule. In order to get it to
   apply case/finiteness to adjectives, I created a supertype
   +nj_lex that both common-noun-lex and adjective-lex
   inherit from. I use this supertype to constraint the
   DTR of these case rules so they don't spin in generation.

That seems to work well enough.  

   I have the definiteness prefix/suffixes being applied
   as an infl-ltow-rule to make sure they are the last rules
   that apply. This is probably not the preferred way to
   do it, but I had to do some triage to get everything
   working.

No, this sounds right to me.