<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3c.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/loose.dtd">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.16640" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff">
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=047342213-04052008><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>Dear Mike et al, </FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=047342213-04052008><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=047342213-04052008><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>Hi! Please permit a slight diversion from collaboration to
touch on mobile computing. This discussion about collaborative software had me
take another look at "WeSay" The screenshots of "We Say" remind me of
MobiCreator(commercial freeware from Amazon) available for PocketPC and Symbian,
maybe even Palm. (I'm hoping that I could compile WeSay for my
PocketPC). It has a simple template for making dictionaries which outputs
an XML file. Mobicreator uses that XML file to compile a dictionary file which
can have varying levels of encryption. I'm toying with the idea
of modifying XML output from FLEx or MDF to to plug into their
template, instead of laboriously re-inputting manually all the
information that has taken years to collect. </FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=047342213-04052008><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=047342213-04052008><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>The point is, we can make the fruits of our labors
available on people's cellphones. Why not? According to BBC, the fastest growth
of cell phone usage are among the "poorest of the poor". Let's harness this
emerging technology to support language preservation!!! Maybe we could compile
WeSay to work on someone's Symbian OS cellphone. Again, why
not?</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=047342213-04052008><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=047342213-04052008><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>Which leads me to a collaboration idea. Why not load
the outputted back up XML files from different edits of the same project into
UltraCompare, and use UltraCompare to merge the files, and then plug the merged
XML file into a backup zip, and restore from the XML? Do you think it might
work?</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=047342213-04052008><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=047342213-04052008><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>An additional collaboration comes from someone on
the FLEx list. This person has written about using VCN, a very simple
client that allows one to access the application from a host computer accross a
network. I think this is very promising, since it does away with the neccessity
of having to install FLEx software on older computers, and works
across platforms. If I understand correctly, I could even access the FLEx
project from a VCN client on my trusty PocketPC!</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=047342213-04052008><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=047342213-04052008><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>I hope this gives people some good ideas.
</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=047342213-04052008><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=047342213-04052008><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>Ken</FONT></SPAN></DIV><BR>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left>
<HR tabIndex=-1>
<FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B>From:</B> lexicographylist@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:lexicographylist@yahoogroups.com] <B>On Behalf Of
</B>maxwell@ldc.upenn.edu<BR><B>Sent:</B> Saturday, May 03, 2008 12:55
AM<BR><B>To:</B> lexicographylist@yahoogroups.com<BR><B>Subject:</B> Re: Re :
[Lexicog] Collaborative lexicography software?<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV id=ygrp-text>
<P>Quoting Heather Souter <<A
href="mailto:hsouter%40gmail.com">hsouter@gmail.<WBR>com</A>>:<BR>> I,
too, am very interested in learning about dictionary development<BR>> for
languages with complex morphologies. ...<BR>> Any insight into how to create
dictionaries that are useful to<BR>> speakers and learners and not only
language specialists would be<BR>> especially welcomed!<BR><BR>One "solution"
(quote marks explained at the end of this msg) is to <BR>give people a computer
program that allows them to look up words <BR>regardless of the inflected form
that they type in. For the simple <BR>cases, this can often be done by just
looking for a substring of the <BR>typed-in word. For a purely suffixing
language, the substring would <BR>begin at the first letter of the typed-in
word.<BR><BR>Of course, the simple cases are not the ones where people need the
most <BR>help. The complex cases--where there is prefixing (or worse, both
<BR>prefixing and suffixing), or infixing, or reduplication, or lots of <BR>stem
allomorphy--<WBR>are the ones where people need help, and where the <BR>simple
solutions don't work. For these morphologically complex <BR>languages, there
needs to be a morphological parser between the user <BR>and the electronic
dictionary per se. The parser's job is to remove <BR>all the suffixes, undo any
stem allomorphy, convert the stem into a <BR>dictionary citation form, and
finally look up the citation form in the <BR>actual dictionary.<BR><BR>One
project that is building such tools in a generic fashion (i.e. in a <BR>way that
should be portable to more languages, as opposed to a <BR>proprietary way that
just works for French, say), is a Department of <BR>Education funded project at
the Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC). <BR>There's an example of how this works
(for Arabic) at <BR><A
href="http://projects.ldc.upenn.edu/art/reader/source/Al-Kitaab.01.">http://projects.<WBR>ldc.upenn.<WBR>edu/art/reader/<WBR>source/Al-<WBR>Kitaab.01.</A>
In this <BR>case, the lookup is limited to the text shown there, but a simple
<BR>modification would allow the user to type in words to be looked up. <BR>The
project is also demonstrating lookup with the same tool on (a <BR>dialect of)
Nahuatl, a morphologically complex language of Mexico. <BR>(Disclaimer: I'm a
consultant on this project, hence biased :-).)<BR><BR>There are of course other
reasons (besides morphology) that make it <BR>hard for people to look up words
in dictionaries, such as spelling. <BR>One can imagine inserting a spell
corrector between the user and the <BR>electronic dictionary. For
morphologically complex languages, such a <BR>spell corrector will almost
certainly have to be based off of a <BR>morphological parser.<BR><BR>And of
course my whole long-winded answer presupposes that electronic <BR>dictionaries
(and the computers that they run on) are a reasonable <BR>solution for the
language speakers. For speakers of languages in <BR>California, that's probably
true; for speakers in the Amazon, that may <BR>not be a solution at
all.<BR><BR>Mike Maxwell<BR>CASL/ U
MD<BR><BR>------------<WBR>---------<WBR>---------<WBR>---------<WBR>---------<WBR>---------<WBR>-<BR>This
message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.<BR><BR></P></DIV><!--End group email --><BR>
<P><FONT size=2>No virus found in this incoming message.<BR>Checked by
AVG.<BR>Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 269.23.7/1410 - Release Date:
5/1/2008 5:30 PM<BR></FONT></P>
<span width="1" style="color: white;"/>__._,_.___</span>
<!-- Start Recommendations -->
<!-- End Recommendations -->
<!-- |**|begin egp html banner|**| -->
<img src="http://geo.yahoo.com/serv?s=97476590/grpId=11682781/grpspId=1709195911/msgId=4444/stime=1209917081" width="1" height="1"> <br>
<!-- |**|end egp html banner|**| -->
<!-- |**|begin egp html banner|**| -->
<br>
<div style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 77%; border-top: 1px solid #666; padding: 5px 0;" >
Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional <br>
<a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist/join;_ylc=X3oDMTJnMDcxOWxzBF9TAzk3NDc2NTkwBGdycElkAzExNjgyNzgxBGdycHNwSWQDMTcwOTE5NTkxMQRzZWMDZnRyBHNsawNzdG5ncwRzdGltZQMxMjA5OTE3MDgx">Change settings via the Web</a> (Yahoo! ID required) <br>
Change settings via email: <a href="mailto:lexicographylist-digest@yahoogroups.com?subject=Email Delivery: Digest">Switch delivery to Daily Digest</a> | <a href = "mailto:lexicographylist-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com?subject=Change Delivery Format: Fully Featured">Switch to Fully Featured</a> <br>
<a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist;_ylc=X3oDMTJlcWdjZGx2BF9TAzk3NDc2NTkwBGdycElkAzExNjgyNzgxBGdycHNwSWQDMTcwOTE5NTkxMQRzZWMDZnRyBHNsawNocGYEc3RpbWUDMTIwOTkxNzA4MQ--">
Visit Your Group
</a> |
<a href="http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/">
Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use
</a> |
<a href="mailto:lexicographylist-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com?subject=Unsubscribe">
Unsubscribe
</a>
<br>
</div>
<br>
<!-- |**|end egp html banner|**| -->
<span style="color: white;"/>__,_._,___</span>
</BODY></HTML>
<BR>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>No virus found in this outgoing message.<BR>
Checked by AVG.<BR>
Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 269.23.8/1412 - Release Date: 5/2/2008 4:34 PM<BR>
</FONT> </P>