Re: Shoebox!

I am currently using it to help me keep track of morphophonemic changes from
root morphemes into actual words, the same way IE changes into modern
IndoEuropean languages.  As an example:

\uf feg - qin - lo - as - yu
\sf feqrinlez
\mg admit - future - complete - I - PL

Shoebox "automagically" changes the roots in the \uf (underlying form) line
into the \sf line (surface form), and also looks up the meanings of the
roots.  Q, by the way, is a voiced velar fricative.  All others letters are
generally equivalent to IPA.  Feqrinlez, then means "We will have admitted".
The root meaning complete also serves as the "suffix" to make perfect aspect
verbs.  Future appears as a noun as well as a suffix, and "PL" indicates that
the morpheme before it is intended to be plural.  Shoebox can also use what
is called a rearrange rule to rearrange all this stuff into English order
sentences, and then apply another Generate step, the same step which can
apply morphophonemic changes, the final Generate step changes typically
broken English (i.e. lamp -s, or walk -ed) into proper English (lamps, or
walked)  It is capable of quite a lot.  And to boot, when you're done with
your lexicon and it has a good twenty thousand words in it, you can print out
a very nicely formatted dictionary with it.  It also supports anthropological
database, etc.  It can handle just about any kind of database you can throw
at it, and through the use of its export feature, can export your stuff in an
impressive way, as well.  Anyone who isn't using it, and doesn't have the "no
Unix support" excuse, should definitely take a look.  Another good program is
Langmaker, which is what I used to generate the 1,478 root words for my
current project.

Jeff Sheets

"On two occasions I have been asked by members of Parliament, `Pray, Mr.
Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers
come out?'  I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas
that could provoke such a question." -- Charles Babbage