A type must be defined at most once.
In the current implementation, the user can only add type definitions for feature values, i.e. for the type UserDefConstant. Let us start with a sample type hierarchy for the pos feature:
<typedeclaration base="pos" version="1.0">
...
<!-- base type: pos -->
<type name="pos">
<subtype nameref="openclass"/>
<subtype nameref="closedclass"/>
<subtype nameref="punctuation"/>
<subtype nameref="misc"/>
</type>
...
</typedeclaration>
Type declaration are encoded in an XML-based format: The type declarations for a feature constitute the contents of a typedeclaration root element. The base attribute defines the base type (or root type) of the type system.
Type definition rules are encoded by type elements. The value of the name attribute is the type t which is being defined. The (direct) subtypes are given by the nameref attribute values of the individual subtype child elements. An occurrence of a type t' in an subtype element is called a use of t'.
In this way, type hierarchies can be defined. The 'terminal nodes' of a type hierarchy (of constant denoting types) are constants:
<!-- open word classes-->
<type name="openclass">
<subtype nameref="noun"/>
<subtype nameref="verb"/>
<subtype nameref="adjective"/>
<!-- adverb -->
<constant value="ADV" comment="schon, bald, doch"/>
</type>
<!-- noun -->
<type name="noun">
<!-- common noun -->
<constant value="NN" comment="Tisch, Herr, [das] Reisen"/>
<!-- proper noun -->
<constant value="NE" comment="Hans, Hamburg, HSV"/>
</type>
On the basis of these type definitions, some disjunctions of feature values can be written in a more concise manner, e.g. the following query can now be replaced by the subsequent query:
[pos = ("NE"|"NN")]
[pos = noun]
Restrictions for type definitions
A type must be defined at most once.
A type must be used exactly once in a type definition.
The first restriction means that neither recursion nor cross-classification (alternative definitions of the same type symbol) can be expressed. If you think you need cross-classification, template definitions (section 9) might be a way out. The second restriction enforces that every type must be hooked up in the type hierarchy. In total this means that type definitions define a tree-shaped type hierarchy. Undefined types may only occur as the leaves of a type hierarchy.