The use of '-' ('not-applicable')

We call this marker 'not-applicable' and, as stated above, its function is just to keep the relationship established between attributes and values. It might be used for the following cases:

(a)

not applicable given a particular combination of attributes-values, i.e. although the attribute applies to the category in a given language, it does not apply to a particular subclass of the category (e.g., Person applies to Pronouns, but not to the Type demonstrative).

(b)

not applicable to a particular lexical item, although the attribute applies to the rest of its paradigm (e.g Gender in the paradigm of Personal Pronouns applies only to the 3rd person, I, you vs. she, he).

(c)

not relevant to a given language, (e.g. Gender to Estonian). This appears as the simplest case to be encoded with a different character and, for the second phase of the Project, we suggest to find a strategy to distinguish this case of not-applicativity from those at points (a) and (b).