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<div>Monica,</div>
<div><x-tab> </x-tab>I think
Becky is pretty much right in the way she divides things up, but I
think I'd say there are two parameters that shouldn't be confused. 1)
formality -- formal/neutral/casual, and 2) obsolescence --
obsolete/archaic/current. We tend to get confused because many archaic
words end up being maintained only in formal contexts, but, in fact,
you can find all combinations.</div>
<div><x-tab> </x-tab>The
problem is, as Becky points out, that some words that were neutral, or
even casual, migrate to being formal and you need a way to capture
that.</div>
<div><x-tab> </x-tab>But
this is only analogous to the problem of representing semantic shift.
Words used to mean things they no longer mean. For example, "put
something by" used to mean to reject, but now it means to save.
So Shakespeare wrote in Julius Ceasar: "he put it by"
(referring to the crown offered to Caesar), meaning he rejected
it.</div>
<div><x-tab> </x-tab>What
all this means is that the properties at issue are not simply
properties of the word, they are part of a relation (in the database
sense).</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>lexeme - time period - formality - obsolescence - meaning</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Most of the time most of the information in this relation is,
from the point of view of dictionary users, redundant. Most entries in
our dictionaries cover all available time periods, are neutral in
formality, and current in obsolescence. So we enter only the lexeme
and the meaning and think we've got what we need. But when we get to
the tough cases like the one under discussion that's were the problem
arises. It stems from trying to make our databases look like the
simple cases, and patch them when troubles arise.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Normalizing a data structure will reveal relations like that
above. That's what I was trying to get at in the dictionary session
when I said the computer folks are not doing their job. They should be
insisting that we work out all the hardest cases to see what the
logical relations are so they can be designed in at the outset, then
problems like this one would be solved at the design stage and not
patched 10,000 entries later.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Rich</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>At 12:01 PM -0600 11/3/05, Monica Macaulay wrote:</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Posoh fellow Algonquian dictionary
compilers...</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>As promised, I'm going to throw out a
topic for discussion. This has arisen in the context of our Menominee
dictionary. We of course have used Bloomfield's Lexicon as a base, and
sometimes he marks things as "archaic." We put a checkbox
into our database and checked it when he made that notation. However,
it dawned on me that there was another, similar situation, which was
when we asked our speakers about a word from the Lexicon, and they
didn't know it. We were putting that in our notes field as "not
familiar." So I started wondering if we should check
"archaic" for those, or have a new checkbox, or what. It
seemed important to me to have a record of what Bloomfield found to be
archaic in the 1920s and to keep that distinct from what the speakers
today are not familiar with. I think there's a difference between
words that were archaic in the 1920s when there was still a viable
community of speakers, and words which are unknown today, when there
are very few speakers and the language is in a severe state of
attrition. Furthermore, there is definite register compression (to use
Ives' term), with the elders constantly saying "oh, that's that
High Menominee, which we didn't learn." We started a
project-internal discussion of it and Becky Shields wrote this long
message laying out a huge list of possibilities (which I'll paste in
below), and now we're stumped about how much to include. So I thought
I'd ask the list, and see if anyone else has considered this issue.
Here's Becky's message:</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="+1"
color="#001781">Thanks for the discussion - I think I see the
complexity of the issue more clearly now. And I now agree that it
would be useful to distinguish between various types of "unknown"
words.</font><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="+1"
color="#001781">Here's the way I see it now (sorry if I'm
repeating a lot of what you just said - just trying to systematize
it in a way that makes sense to me):</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="+1"
color="#001781">There are at least two different issues:</font><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="+1"
color="#001781">1) there are colloquial and formal registers, and the
formal register may contain archaic words which (presumably) used to
be in the colloquial register in the past, but now survive only in
prayers, storytelling, etc. Speakers familiar with the formal register
know these words, but do not use them in everyday
conversation.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="+1"
color="#001781">2) there are words that have totally fallen out of use
(in all registers). These are "unknown" words.</font><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="+1"
color="#001781">In addition, the data we are analyzing come from two
distinct time periods:</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Times New Roman" size="+1"
color="#001781">A)</font><font face="Arial" size="+1" color="#001781">
1920's</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Times New Roman" size="+1"
color="#001781">B)</font><font face="Arial" size="+1" color="#001781">
contemporary (1980's-present, if we include data gathered by Tim
Guile, etc.?)</font><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="+1"
color="#001781">In principle, there could be distinct sets of both
archaic and unknown words at each time period. So there are four
possibilities:</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="+1"
color="#001781">1A) archaic words in the 1920s - words LB found in
use only in the formal register, presumably the ones he calls
"archaic" in the lexicon</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="+1"
color="#001781">2A) unknown words in the 1920s - words from earlier
sources (like Hoffman?) that LB's speakers did not know. If LB
didn't do this type of elicitation, we may not be aware of any of
these.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="+1"
color="#001781">1B) contemporary archaic words - words that speakers
currently know, but use only in formal registers like prayers. Lavina
and Marie may not know this register much at all, but perhaps some
male speakers (Joe Beaver?) do, or perhaps there are some prayers or
stories on the pre-2000 tapes. I have definitely heard Marie and Sarah
say about certain words that they recognized them only from some
prayer, so this set certainly has some members.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="+1"
color="#001781">2B) contemporary unknown words - words not in use by
contemporary speakers. As you point out, we have a very limited set of
contemporary speakers, even if tapes from the 80s and 90s are
included. This limits our data set, and in addition contemporary
speakers probably have a smaller vocabulary than speakers in the 20s,
due to the moribund status of the language. This is just a fact of
life though, and I don't know what we can do about it, other than be
very very sad! We are certainly obligated to report what we actually
observe, and not what we wish we had observed. And definitely not try
to pretend we observed what LB observed. Accurately documenting
language attrition could also be very useful.</font><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="+1"
color="#001781">The sets obviously might overlap - so words in 1A
may now be in 1B, 2B, or even have become known (although this seems
unlikely). So actually for any given word there are multiple
possibilities. These seem the most likely combinations to
me:</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="+1"
color="#001781">- 1A-1B (used to be archaic - still
archaic)</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="+1"
color="#001781">- 1A-2B (used to be archaic - now
unknown)</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="+1"
color="#001781">- 2A-2B (used to be unknown - still
unknown)</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="+1"
color="#001781">- 1B (used to be colloquial - now
archaic)</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="+1"
color="#001781">- 2B (used to be colloquial - now
unknown)</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="+1"
color="#001781">- (and of course the unmarked case - used to be
colloquial - still colloquial)</font><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="+1"
color="#001781">Maybe that's more detail than anybody needs or
wants, I don't know.</font><font face="Wingdings" size="+1"
color="#001781"> J</font><font face="Arial" size="+1" color="#001781">
But as you guys pointed out, this info could be useful to
historical/comparative linguists, and community members interested in
bringing back older words, and also people studying language
death.</font><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="+1"
color="#001781">-becky</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>So we would be very interested to hear
what y'all have to say on the matter.<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Thanks!<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Helvetica">Monica
Macaulay</font><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Helvetica">Department of
Linguistics</font><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Helvetica">1168 Van Hise
Hall</font><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Helvetica">1220 Linden
Drive</font><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Helvetica">Madison, WI
53706</font><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Helvetica">phone (608)
262-2292</font><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Helvetica">fax (608)
265-3193</font><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><a
href="http://ling.wisc.edu/~macaulay/monica.html"><font
face="Helvetica">http://ling.wisc.edu/~macaulay/monica.html</font></a
></blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<x-sigsep><pre>--
</pre></x-sigsep>
<div
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>
<br>
Richard A. Rhodes<br>
Department of Linguistics<br>
University of California<br>
Berkeley, CA 94720-2650<br>
Voice (510) 643-7325<br>
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