Create tables for specific grammatical contexts

[jcrippen]

Currently the tables are organized by simple combinatoric possibility without regard to meaning. This is useful for phonological analysis but it’s less straightforward for grammatical analysis. We need to figure out how the data can be reorganized to reflect specific grammatical contexts, e.g. the set of all hortatives or the set of all imperatives. This is already in place for the prospective aspect. The perfective aspect tables conflate true perfective (wu- and u-) with ∅-conjugation habituals that have the u- perfective prefix.

Negation (and prohibitive/optative) would be an additional dimension to add to some – but not all, e.g. imperative – of the grammatical context prefix charts. In some cases there is no surface effect – e.g. prospective – so even though negation can happen there would be no difference between affirmative and negative tables. But in others – e.g. perfectives – there is at least i- suppression even if irrealis u- is not discernable. There may also be switching between lexical/derived irrealis w- in affirmatives and syntactic irrealis u- in negatives. So phase II of the grammatical table project could be negation tables.

One early decision is whether these grammatical tables should be in their own document or included as a second part to the existing document. The advantages and disadvantages of both approaches need to be listed and considered.