Search patterns can contain literal phones and any of the following elements.
Element |
Example |
Description |
|---|---|---|
* |
[C]/*_* |
Represents zero or more phones or diacritics. |
+ |
[V]/+_+ |
Represents one or more phones or diacritics. |
# |
[C]/*_# |
Represents a space or word boundary. |
< > |
<MyClassName> |
Angle brackets surround class names. |
{ } |
{[C],[V]} |
Braces surround OR groups. |
( )
|
{([C][V]),[V]}
|
Parentheses surround items in an OR group that represent two or more phones. |
[ ] |
|
Square brackets surround the following: |
|
[Approximant] |
Descriptive feature names. |
|
[+high] |
Distinctive feature names. |
|
[C] |
C, representing the class of all consonants. |
|
[V] |
V, representing the class of all vowels. |
|
[◌̥+] |
|
|
[[+high][+back]] |
When OR groups contain items between commas that represent two or more phones, it is important to surround them with parentheses ( ).
For example, {([C][V]),[V]}/#_* matches either CV or V at the beginning of a word. Without parentheses, {[C][V],[V]}/#_* is equivalent to {[C],[V],[V]}/#_* which matches either C or V.
Here is an example of using
a rule for and groups with distinctive features that someone has used:
[m[-syll]]/*_*.
Then
building on that, here is one possible way to distinguish m
and n that are not
syllabic or long:
{[m[-syll][-long]],[n[-syll][-long]]}/*_*.
Most elements may appear anywhere in the search item, preceding environment, and following environment. There are some exceptions for *, +, and #.
Different search patterns might find the same results. For example:
[V]/*_* finds all phones that are in the class of vowels.
[Vowel]/*_* finds all phones that have the Vowel descriptive feature.
Although descriptive features, distinctive features, and class names are stored by Phonology Assistant with regard to uppercase and lowercase, they may be written in search patterns without regard to case. For example, the distinctive feature +ATR may also be written +atr. The exception to this rule is C and V in the consonant and vowel classes. They must be written in uppercase as [C] and [V].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqHlWuBvlZs&feature=youtu.be shows an example of building a search pattern.
The goal of the search pattern in this video is to filter for entries starting with a plosive, followed by a liquid or a nasal, with an optional vowel in between, e.g., bla, bila, bala, kima, kama, kra, kera, kira, kara, etc.
You can also learn other things to do from this video, even if this goal is different from yours.