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Notes

	question-clitic-lex :+ [ SYNSEM.LOCAL.CAT.HEAD.MOD.FIRST.LOCAL.CONT.HOOK.INDEX.INFO-STR focus ].

Since question-clitic-lex is defined in nishnaabemwin.tdl, you might
as well as this constraint directly to the original definition.  Spreading
the definition out over multiple statements can lead to maintenance problems.

 By modifying the values of TOPIC and FOCUS, topic-head and focus-head
 record their presence in the parse and avoid spinning.

They're binary rules, so they couldn't spin anyway.

  The interaction of topic-head, focus-head, and polar questions works
  out very nicely: because the question clitic is enforcing [ INFO-STR
  focus ] on the head it modifies, only focus-head can combine the
  focus-clitic constituent with the rest of the sentence.  This
  prevents, for example, placing two verbal arguments before the verb
  while questioning the first one.  "Gaag-wan na zhiishiib
  w-doo-mnopwaad-aa-an" parsed in previous iterations of this grammar,
  but is now considered ungrammatical because "gaag-wan" is focused,
  forcing "gaag-wan na" to be attached to the rest of the sentence by
  focus-head.  Since "zhiishiib w-doo-mnopwaad-aa-an" can only be
  built with topic-head or focus-head, neither of which are valid
  head-daughters for focus-head, the sentence does not parse.*

Cool :)

  *The sentence does, of course, parse with our grammar, but only by
   coordinating "gaag-wan na" and "zhiishiib" so that "gaag-wan na
   zhiishiib" is a single verbal argument.  The desired interpretation
   in which "gaag-wan" and "zhiishiib" are distinct arguments of the
   verb is not possible.

It would be interesting to know if this parse is legit for native speakers.
That is, it would be interesting to know how na interacts with coordinated
noun phrases.  My intuition is that the whole coordinated NP should be
focused, not just one conjunct...

  The number word "nswi" appears in focus position, while the noun it
  modifies, "jiimaanan" follows the verb.  A proper analysis of this
  would link the quantifier and the noun semantically and additionally
  provide [ INFO-STR focus ] to "nswi".  Even disregarding cases like
  this, questioning of multi-word noun phrases shares a similar
  problem, because the question clitic "na" must be the second word in
  the sentence, even if what is focused is the entire noun phrase:

	Maaba na nishnaabe moonshkwed?
	Maaba na nishnaabe w-doo-moonhashkiwed-0
	this.3SG.AN QUES Indian.AN.3SG 3-PRES-weed-SG
	'Is it this Indian who is weeding?'

  Presumably the focus can lie on just the determiner or the entire
  noun phrase, although whether this is the case is unknown.

This is interesting, and it would take a bit more to get it working
this way.  ... some means of propagating the INFO-STR of the
first NP element to the whole NP, but only when they are contiguous.
Which would probably just require modifying the NP rules.  What
happens when the preverbal constituent is ADJ + N?

  Finally, Nishnaabemwin does have other mechanisms for marking focus,
  most notably cleft-like constructions using the discourse particle
  "mii".  These constructions, however, make use of relative clauses,
  so we have ignored them.  Nishnaabemwin also makes use of
  left-dislocation to mark topics, which is distinct from the
  sentence-initial topic position implemented here.  However, this is
  a useless distinction except in the presence of the sentence-initial
  negative adverb, and we do not have this adverb implemented yet.
  When we add an analysis of this adverb, we will also provide a
  mechanism for left-dislocation.

As in you get both:

TOP NEG FOC V
NEG TOP FOC V

?

If so, do the two topic positions contrast with each other in some way?

  Before adding variable-property mapping rules to the grammar, we
  wanted to ensure we were able to generate in order to isolate .vpm
  details from our grammar itself. We were unable to get generation
  going for Lab 7, so knew that there were probably lexical rules that
  were causing generation to "spin" or causing cycles. By reducing the
  number of maximum edges to 100 and reviewing the generation charts,
  we found that our head-comp and comp-head rules were feeding each
  other, causing "spin". We added the following constraints which
  stopped the "spin":

I still don't see how this could be, unless you also had some
semantically empty words in the mix, since these are binary phrases
and therefore always need two daughters.

	E.ASPECT : ASPECT
	  habituality >> habituality
	  habituality << habituality
	  begin >> begin
	  begin << begin
	  end >> end
	  end << end
	  * >> no-aspect
	  no-aspect << no-aspect

	PNG.GEND : GENDER
	  anim >> anim
	  anim << anim
	  inan >> inan
	  inan << inan
	 
	PNG.OBVIATION : OBVIATION
	  prox >> prox
	  prox << prox
	  obv >> obv
	  obv << obv

Why not use <> for the bidirectional ones?

Lab 7 baseline:
Coverage: 90.0%
Distinct analyses (+): 2.24
Overgeneration: 13.7%
Distinct analyses (-): 3.12
Total analyses: 2.30

Lab 8 coverage:
Coverage: 85.9%
Distinct analyses (+): 2.70
Overgeneration: 12.8%
Distinct analyses (-): 3.53
Total analyses: 2.76

Any idea why you lost those sentences?

  We wanted to ensure we were generating for our basic 4 verb classes
  VAI, VII, VTA and VTI. Starting with a simple VII:

	Waagaakwad wiigiinboode
	Waagaakwad w-wii-giinboodeg-0
	axe.IN.3SG 3-FUT-be+sharpened-3SG
	'The axe needs sharpening'

  Results: 4 realizations, all sharing the same MRS. Given that
  Nishnaabemwin is free word order we would expect 2 realizations, but
  we are now getting a focus-subj-head pair and head-subj based on the
  ambiguity introduced by our information structure grammar rules.


The focus-subj-head rule seems to replace the older subj-head rule,
so I doubt this is the cause of the extra ambiguity.  In fact, you have
two focus-subj-head rule realizations and two head-subj realizations.
There must be some cross-cutting ambiguity.  Indeed, it seems to
come from the empty-aspect-lex rule, which applies in some trees
but not others.  You don't want any constant (empty) rules in slots
that are not obligatory.






