Lexicon storage methodology (was: Lexicon counting...)

Embarassingly, I mis-keyed, and inadvertantly sent this before I was
finished. Ignore the previous version, or laugh at it, as you like. :)

-----Original Message-----
From: Iain E. Davis [mailto:feaelin@kemenel.org]
Sent: Wednesday, 2006 September 06 8:38 PM
To: 'Constructed Languages List'
Subject: RE: [CONLANG] Lexicon counting (was: Weekly Vocab #1.1.1...)

Edgard wrote:
> I used Excel as well, but I'm using the Openoffice equivalent for the
> Unicode compatibility. Then I save it as a CSV file,
Hmm. To what degree did Excel not do what you needed unicode wise?
I was able to come up with what I needed for IPA symbols, which was my main
concern. I was happy from there. :)

Hm. Was it sorting related? I had to rig some things up to get sorting the
way I wanted. :)

Not that I think you should change. If OpenOffice works successfully,
awesome!

> and open it with PHP. That part is quite easy. Then I show it through
> PHP, and I'm now fighting against inflection ; ).
> Here is the result so far:
> http://ausonia.parnassum.org/dicionario.tudo.php
Pretty. I've not anything so well constructed, web-wise. :)

> But I just realized that I can't reverse the entries. I guess I should
> have a English dictionary, for instance, and link my Ausonian entries
> to the English entries? Ouch.
The method I used for achieve that effect doesn't produce a
English->Taraitola dictionary, or in your case an English->Ausonian one.

What I did is one of my columns (in addition to the _definition_ column) is
"English Word" column. This is the closest equivalent english word, if any.
Then for the English->Taraitola "Cross-Index" a entries looks like:

I: äm
You: säm

And my expectation is that you look up äm and säm in the Taraitola->English
dictionary, to be sure that you're using a word with the correct flavor.

One thing I've never gotten around to fixing is output where two Taraitola
words map to the same english word...this generates two entries on the
English->Taraitola side.

I also appear to be repeating myself. I think its my week for redundancy.

> Could you not be more specific in the entries? Or it is a word-to-word
> association?
Perhaps. In at least the case of a trio of words that all mean 'love', there
really aren't any other words that match up at all. Since my main intent is
to give an english speaker a way to find the right words, it serves its
purpose. :)

> I would put the names on the main dictionary just for the etymology.
> Who were the bearers of the name is a matter for another publication :
> ). Do gods count on this restriction?
I believe I have gods listed as 'C' entries. However, I also have a 'tag'
column, which is purely arbitrary so I can filter easily for particular
groups of words, such as...'Deities'.

> And these expressions are entries on the dictionary, or 'sub-meanings'
> on the main word? for instance:
For my part, I never put any expressions in any form of my dictionary. I
think my intention was to use them as syntax examples, but they've mostly
languished, with my attention elsewhere.

> Someday, hopefully, I will pass the thousand frontier ; ).
Depending on how you count it, I'm either looming close, or still have three
hundred or so to go to hit that mark. :). After I tackle Swadesh's list....?


> What about giving for each word/entry an example phrase?
> Specially for verbs, it would be useful for showing the
> prepositions... the case of the object, and for exercising the
> fluency, too...
Like many dictionaries do, in fact. Sadly, I've not done so, but it would
make sense to do so. Much like the 2nd weekly vocab has 1. Mushroom and then
"I found mushrooms in the forest". As you say, this is especially useful for
verbs, practice, and the specificity of prepositions.

I currently don't have such an animal, but maybe I should put it on my
horizon. :)

Hm. My columns are: Taraitola Word, Pronounciation, Part of Speech,
definition, English Word, A or C (regular word, or proper name), and the
ever-arbitrary "Tag" column. And then some other, "calculated" columns,
primarily needed for the 'dictionary generator' VBA script.

Iain.

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