Big bracket structure (linguistics feature structure)

Question

I would like to create something along the lines of this:

I have tried, but failed miserably. I know that I can use \left[ and \right], but other than that I am completely lost. Can anybody help me out with this? Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

Since these are the kinds of structures you may be drawing a lot, it's really best to create some helper macros for formatting them. Here I've created a feature bundle macro that takes a comma delimited list of features and puts then in a bracketed matrix. The optional argument specifies the subscripted element for that bundle.

\fbun{F1,F2,F3}

I've also created an uninterpretable feature macro to format features with an italic u and the feature in small caps.

\uf{f1}

Finally I've created a feature domination macro which puts two features in a domination relation:

\fdom{f1}{f2}

Putting it all together we get. Personally I wouldn't use $\nu$ for little-v, but simply use $v$. I've also scaled the # sign, which in Latin Modern is quite large and ugly.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath,amssymb}
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\renewcommand\#{\protect\scalebox{0.75}{\protect\raisebox{0.4ex}{\char"0023}}}% smaller \# from https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/256553/2693
\usepackage{xparse}
\newcommand*{\addrow}[1]{\text{#1}\\}
\ExplSyntaxOn
\NewDocumentCommand{\fbun}{om}{%
\IfNoValueTF{#1}
{\ensuremath{\begin{bmatrix}
      \forcsvlist\addrow{#2}%
   \end{bmatrix}}}
{\ensuremath{\begin{bmatrix}
      \forcsvlist\addrow{#2}%
   \end{bmatrix}\sb{\textstyle#1}}}
}
\ExplSyntaxOff
\newcommand*{\fdom}[2]{\ensuremath{\begin{array}{@{}c@{}}\text{#1}\\\vrule\\\text{#2}\end{array}}}
\newcommand*{\uf}[1]{\textit{u}\textsc{#1}}
\begin{document}
$\nu\left[\fbun[\pi]{
\fdom{\uf{pers}}{\uf{part}}
} \rhd
\fbun[\#]{
\fdom{\uf{pers}}{\uf{pl}}
}
\right]$

\end{document}

Answer 2

You can obtain it with amsmath:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{amsmath, amssymb}

\begin{document}

\[ \nu \left[\begin{bmatrix} u\textsc{\small pers}\\ \vrule \\ u\textsc{\small part}
\end{bmatrix}_{\!\!\pi}\rhd \begin{bmatrix} u\textsc{\small pers}\\ \vrule \\ u\textsc{\small pl}
\end{bmatrix}_{\!\!\#}\right] \]%

\end{document}