Abstract The central concern of linguistics is to succinctly state generalizations. But as numerous linguists have pointed out over the years, generalizations do not always come for free. A formalism’s ability to account for the data does not entail that it can express the relevant generalizations about the data. We illustrate this point with a computational case study in micro-morphology. More precisely, we show that the subregular complexity of adjective inflection in Noon varies depending on what generalizations one wishes to capture.