I don't think you want to use what you sent in any case. As it sits POS, morph, and lemma MUST start with "x-". Naturally I propose that we require the following regex in a new simple type that we use for POS, morph, lemma, sync, and xlit. <xs:pattern value="(\w(\.[\w]+){0,}))\.\.(\w(\.[\w]+){0,}))"/> Todd