Lexical Tools

Inflection

Inflection

An inflection is lexical variant reflecting the grammatical role of a lexical item. Such variants include singular and plural forms of nouns, the principle parts of verbs and the positive, comparative and superlative forms of adjectives. A given form may represent more than one inflection type. For example, "hit" might be the infinitive, past-tense or past-participle of a verb or it might be the singular of a noun. In the Java implementation, an Inflection class extends from BitMaskBase class.

  • Inflection variants
    Inflection variants are described in the following table:

    BitValueNameOther SymbolsExamplePossible Categories
    0 1 Uninflection
    (base)     		 
    • red
    • fast
    • be
    • that
    • and
    • the
    • can
    • dog
    • to
    • it
    • break
    • adj (1)
    • adv (2)
    • aux (4)
    • compl (8)
    • conj (16)
    • det (32)
    • modal (64)
    • noun (128)
    • prep (256)
    • pron (512)
    • verb (1024)
    1 2 comparative  
    • redder
    • faster
    • adj (1)
    • adv (2)
    2 4 superlative  
    • reddest
    • fastest
    • adj (1)
    • adv (2)
    3 8 plural
    • p
    • dogs
    • noun (128)
    4 16 presPart
    • ing
    • being
    • breaking
    • aux (4)
    • verb (1024)
    5 32 past  
    • did
    • could
    • broke
    • aux (4)
    • modal (64)
    • verb (1024)
    6 64 pastPart  
    • been
    • broken
    • aux (4)
    • verb (1024)
    7 128 pres3s  
    • is
    • breaks
    • aux (4)
    • verb (1024)
    8 256 positive  
    • red
    • fast
    • adj (1)
    • adv (2)
    9 512 singular
    • s
    • dog
    • noun (128)
    10 1024 infinitive
    • inf
    • be
    • break
    • aux (4)
    • verb (1024)
    11 2048 pres123p  
    • do
    • have
    • aux (4)
    12 4096 pastNeg  
    • didn't
    • hadn't
    • couldn't
    • wouldn't
    • shouldn't
    • aux (4)

    • modal (64)
    13 8192 pres123pNeg  
    • don't
    • haven't
    • aux (4)
    14 16384 pres1s  
    • am
    • aux (4)
    15 32768 past1p23pNeg  
    • weren't
    • aux (4)
    16 65536 past1p23p  
    • were
    • aux (4)
    17 131072 past1s3sNeg  
    • wasn't
    • aux (4)
    18 262144 pres1p23p  
    • are
    • break
    • aux (4)
    • verb (1024)
    19 524288 pres1p23pNeg  
    • aren't
    • aux (4)
    20 1048576 past1s3s  
    • was
    • aux (4)
    21 2097152 pres  
    • can
    • will
    • 'll
    • modal (64)
    22 4194304 pres3sNeg  
    • isn't
    • hasn't
    • aux (4)
    23 8388608 presNeg  
    • can't
    • cannot
    • modal (64)

    where:

    • pres = present
    • past = past
    • Part = participle
    • 1 = first personal
    • 2 = second personal
    • 3 = third personal
    • s = singular
    • p = plural
    • Neg = Negative

  • Combination of multiple categories
    As described in the BitMaskBase page, in addition to use a value to represent a single inflection, it can be represented a combination of multiple inflections.

    For examples, "hit" can be the base (1), infinitive (1024), past-tense (32), past-participle (64), or present-first personal plural-second and third personal plural (262144) of a verb or might be the singular (512) of a noun. It can be represented as a value of 263777 (= 1 + 1024 + 32 + 64 + 262144 + 512) when the -CR:o (combine records by outputs) options is used. This value can be viewed as names <base+past+pastPart+singular+infinitive+pres1p23p> by using -SC (show category) options. In some Lexical tools flow operations, there is no information about the inflection, such as lower case (-f:l). In such case, a value of 16777215 is used to represent all categories <all> because:
    16777215 = 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 32 + 64 + 128 + 256 + 512 + 1024 + 2048 + 4096 + 8192 + 16384 + 32768 + 65536 + 131072 + 262144 + 524288 + 1048576 + 2097152 + 4194304 + 8388608