Coordinating tiers with CLAN

[Brian MacWhinney]

Dear Patti, Charles, Javier, and Info-ChiBolts,
  Javier's answer was extremely accurate and helpful.  He pointed out the
importance of adding an asterisk to mark the error on the %mor line, the
use of freq, and the use of modrep.  I would only add a couple of
things.  First, you can use what the manual calls cross-tier COMBO to
spot most of these beasts.  The only problem with cross-tier COMBO is
that the search strings are tricky to compose, but there are examples in
the manual.  Second, Javier correctly points out that MODREP requires a
one-to-one match between main line and dependent tier.  If you are doing
simple syntactic category tagging, that is easy for the %syn.  And if
you are using the automatic MOR, this is always correct there too.  The
big problem is that the %err line has never been properly integrated
with the other programs and this is why you need the asterisk on the
%mor line.
  Javier suggests that enhancements to the MODREP program might help in
this area. So, if you folks think that MODREP would be more useful than
cross-tier COMBO and if you can specify proposed extensions, we will try
to implement them.

--Brian MacWhinney