As with any theoretical construct, we should justify every feature and value that we use. We do this both for the account of each specific language, and at the level of our general theory. We shall aim for a list of the features and their values. This would be a beautifully simple typology. It therefore makes good sense to work towards such an inventory, unless and until it is proved impossible. Establishing this inventory requires the solution to two problems, the analysis problem and the correspondence problem. In this chapter we concentrate on the analysis problem – how we determine the features and their values in a given language. In the next, we go on to the correspondence problem – whether the features and values we identify are in some sense the same across languages. Our main focus in the current chapter, then, is the analysis problem, the justification of features and their values. As we make a first attempt at the analysis problem (§4.1), three issues arise and need to be dealt with for us to make further progress. First the question of conditions (§4.2), then the role of hierarchies (§4.3), and third, the serious problem of gradience (§4.4). Having tackled these issues, we consider canonicity briefly (§4.5).

The analysis problem

When tackling the analysis problem we face a whole set of questions. How do we decide if a language has a particular feature? For example, does Archi have person? How do we decide how many values a feature has in a given language? For example, how many case values does Russian have? Some of the issues are profound, and will be the subject of continuing debate, while others are highly practical, concerning standardization and the presentation and glossing of examples. We begin with the analysis problem at the level of features (§4.1.1) and we discuss values shortly, in §4.1.2; we give special attention to gender values in §4.1.3, and consider the question of an inventory in §4.1.4.