Notes
-------------------------------------------------------

  This change required an extensive rewriting of test sentences and
  was done incrementally based on decisions about the grammar. For
  example, in many of our sample sentences, 3rd person singular
  present tense in the standard orthography has no visible inflection
  for person/number/gender or tense (morphophonological reasons for
  the deletion of person/number/gender and historical reasons for the
  leaving off of present tense). We decided to make these inflections
  explicit in our regularized morpheme delimited test sentences.

This is fine, though you could also use zero affixes for these.

  Due the radical changes to the Lab 2 grammar and testsuite, and the
  inordinate number of combinations of prefix/suffix noun/verb, taking
  the extra step of using make_item and running the entire testsuite
  through itsdb would take too much time (and add other confounding
  factors like errors in the testsuite breaking make_item or the
  tsdb). Errors were frequent especially when creating the verbal
  inflection pipeline.

This would be somewhat counterbalanced by the efficiency gains in
using [incr tsdb()] for batch processing...

  Nishnaabemwin distinguishes three tenses: past, present, and future.
  The tense prefixes for past and future are obligatory when a
  non-present meaning is expressed.  The present tense prefix is
  omitted sometimes, especially among older speakers, but since we
  cannot use the customization system to make a single instance of a
  morpheme type optional, we have left all tense marking obligatory.
  This is also a good approach because the younger generation of
  speakers, to compensate for an overall pattern of syncope in the
  language, have begun using the present tense prefix in all
  situations.  Our choice reflects a more up-to-date version of the
  language.

Another option is to add a zero morpheme to that slot which constraints
TENSE to present, just like the overt present tense marker.

I think there more standard terms for these:

  aspect1_name=habituality
    aspect1_supertype1_name=aspect
  aspect2_name=begin
    aspect2_supertype1_name=aspect
  aspect3_name=end

"habitual" and "inceptive", and possibly "completive" or "perfective" (depending).

When I try parsing this one, it looks like ntaa- is still treated as part
of the verb stem:

#2.5 vai
Source: a:935
Vetted: s
Judgment: g
Phenomena: wo
Ntaagshkigwaaso nnahaangnikwem
W-doo-ntaa-gshkigwaaso nnahaangnikwem
3-PRES-HAB-be.good.at.sewing my.daughter.in.law
'My daughter-in-law is good at sewing'

  Gender (animacy) is enforced by default, since all subjects of VAI verbs are animate.

I'm not sure what "by default" means here.  It seems like what you want
to do is have the verb class directly constrain the animacy of the subject.

  The agreement is not straightforward, however -- it can be a bit of
  a logic puzzle to identify the agreement features of the subject and
  object using the verb morphology.

Fun if you can get the computer doing it for you then!!

  Due to the extreme morphological complexity of this verb class, we
  have demonstrated agreement phenomena in each of the others, and
  left the implementation of this class of verbs to another day.  More
  information about this phenomenon is in the section on unimplemented
  phenomena.

Fair enough, though it would be nice to get this working.

  The prefix g- indicates a second-person actor for VAI verbs.  The
  same prefix is used for transitive verbs involving a second-person
  actor or goal.  For third-person prefixes, we have adopted the
  convention of the author of our reference grammar in using a prefix
  w-, called "structural w".  For some verb classes, a prefix was
  formerly present but has since been syncopated.  Prefixes are not
  optional -- if a prefix is absent, then the verb is unambiguously in
  the third person -- so "no prefix" is equivalent to a phonologically
  empty prefix, and we denote this with w-.  Therefore, in any
  examples, if a sentence is not overtly prefixed in the orthography,
  we have added a "w-" to our segmented line to represent this empty
  prefix.

Is there a reason not to use the ability of the customization system to
create zero prefixes?

  Sentential negation in Nishnaabemwin is represented by a negative
  adverb, "gaa wii", and by negative inflection "-sii" on the verb.
  In intransitive verbs, this negative suffix immediately follows the
  verb, while in transitive verbs it follows the theme suffix.  The
  adverb "gaa wii" (sometimes simply "gaa") always precedes the verb,
  though it is not necessarily adjacent.  Occasionally, in casual
  speech, the adverb can be omitted, but generally speaking, both
  elements are required in sentential negation. Due to this complexity
  we chose to implement only the negative verbal inflection "-sii" in
  our grammar implementation.  Here is an example of sentential
  negation:

This sounds like French-style two part negation (cf ne ... pas).  We
can analyze this by having the lexical rule that adds the negative
affix also add the negative adverb to the COMPS list of the verb.  
This analysis isn't currently available through the customization system,
but it can be done (later) through tdl editing.  What are the word order
constraints on that adverb?  I assume that its presence doesn't change
anything about the verbal morphology that cares about the object.  Since
those lexical rules are looking at the COMPS list, we'll have to be careful
about how we add the adverb!  (Unless the negative morpheme happens
to attach outside any such morphology?)  This is a very interesting case
for me, since it shows the interaction of the analyses of two different
phenomena...

  Argument dropping is always allowed.  This was represented by answer
  appropriately in the questionnaire: subject dropping can occur with
  any verb and object dropping is always allowed.  In such situations,
  agreement morphology on the verb is not lost.  We take this to be
  subject/object marking, and therefore defined subject and object
  marking to be required in all situations, regardless of any argument
  dropping.

Good!

  As mentioned previously, we have not implemented the morphology for
  VTA verbs.  There are several inflectional slots for this class, and
  each one only provides partial constraints on multiple features.
  For example, the personal prefix, which is straightforward in other
  verbs, only indicates that at least one of the arguments has a
  particular value for person.  A prefix "g-" means that either the
  subject is second person, or the object is second person.  Which is
  the case depends on the value of suffixes on the verb.  When only
  first and second persons are involved, the theme suffix
  unambiguously specifies the person of both subject and object, but
  if a third person is involved, only the relative position of subject
  and object on the direct-inverse hierarchy is specified.  If only
  third persons are involved, this can help resolve the feaures of
  gender and obviation, but if a first or second person is involved,
  no such information is included.  Due to these complications and
  more, we elected to leave this class of verbs unimplemented for this
  week.  There are many VTA verbs in our test suite, mostly because
  they are the most common class of verbs.  But sentences with these
  verbs in them will not parse.

As you work on this, please post early and often to GoPost.  I'll see if
I can get Scott to peak in, since I'm sure he has good ideas on what to
do with this.

Total items: 63
negative items: 26
word string: 2.62
lexical items: 5.22
distinct analyses: 1.00
total results: 4
overall coverage: 15.4 %

Any idea what's going on with the overgeneration examples?
