Description of the proposal

The proposal has been prepared in the usual Multext table format, which displays the specifications (as sets of attribute-values, see below for further details about the notation), with their respective codes used to mark them in the lexicons. Two types of features are distingished:

(i)

the minimal core features
These are shared by most of the languages and are highlighted in the tables with asterisks (*). We tried to keep this set in common to all the Multext and Multext-East languages. In such a way, the comparability across the information encoded in the lexical lists of Central & Eastern and of the six original Multext languages is ensured to a certain extent.

(ii) the Multext-East language-specific features
These are shared by the Multext-East languages, but differ from the Multext ones. The formulation of this set has been, as already mentioned, highly delicate, due also to the fact that many language-specific values were presented in the applications and sometimes the same (or 'similar enough') morphosyntactic phenomenon was referred to with two different attribute or value names. The phase of recognition and harmonization of semantics of some attributes, values and naming conventions has, hence, required much effort.

If a feature-value is used by only one Multext-East language (i.e. if a value is language-specific) it has been marked with l.s.. This marking is used only when a subset of the feature's values is language specific -- in case a whole attribute (i.e. all its features) is language specific, then the mark l.s. is not used.

This representation, with the concrete applications which display and exemplify the attributes and values and provide their internal constraints and relationships, makes the proposal self-explanatory. Other groups can easily test the specifications on their language, simply by following the method of the applications. The possibility of incorporating idiosyncratic classes and distinctions after the common core features makes the proposal relativelly adaptable and flexible, without ruining compatibility.