ImportantThe Hermit Crab (HC) parser is a morphological parser and generator for classical generative phonology and morphology. See: Parsing words overview.
The accuracy of the analyses produced by this parser directly reflects the quality and completeness of the information you have entered in the Lexicon and the Grammar areas. You can see a summary of that information in the Grammar Sketch.
From Lexicon, this parser can use all of the information used by the default (XAmple) parser. Also, to function as a Phonological Rule-based parser, it uses the following information:
Affix Process Rule field for the lexeme form
Affix Process Rule field for any allomorphs
From Grammar, this parser can use the all of the information used by the default (XAmple) parser, and also the following information:
Feature name abbreviation and value name abbreviation.
The order of phonological and metathesis rules.
Generally speaking, the way classical generative phonological rules like these work, one starts with an "underlying form" and then passes that through the series of ordered rules. The output of one rule is the input to the next rule, and the final result is the output of the final rule.
ImportantTo make this parser function efficiently as a Phonological Rule-based parser, observe the following:
Every phoneme used in the orthography must be defined as a phoneme. This includes orthographic hyphens and other characters.
The phonological features need to uniquely identify each phoneme, including orthographic hyphens. It is crucial that every phoneme be uniquely identified by its phonological features.
Fully specify each phoneme (not minimal specificity).
Phonological features used in a rule should be explicit.
Using a phoneme in a rule is more efficient (instead of some of its distinctive features).
Avoid using archiphonemes that are upper case equivalents of a character in your orthography.
Make sure every affix process rule is complete.
For more information about this parser, on the Help menu, point to Resources, and then click Introduction to Parsing.
This parser handles only one word at a time, so the Parse result field will not show "Successful" for phrases, such as idioms.
See Create a Pattern-Matching entry for the GuessRoots feature. See Also: About parser parameters.
TipYou can make a rule available (Active) or unavailable to parsers.
See: Active field (Ad hoc Rules), Active field (Compound Rules), or Active field (Phonological Rules).
You can make an affix template table available (Active) or unavailable to parsers.
See: Active field (Affix Templates).