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<DIV>Please accept a word of caution from an old geezer who's been around the
block many times with lexical data and different programs to manage it.
Fieldworks is a great program, but it's got a big learning curve. It and some
other programs designed for managing lexical data are best learned in a workshop
setting or otherwise with a tutor. Let's remember the audience here: mother
tongue speakers of a language and second language learners of ancestral
languages. I have found that it's best to keep things as conceptually natural
for such valuable language resource people who are recording their own
languages.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I don't want to be cranky but Natalie asked about working with her data.
She did not ask about what software programs are available to do that. Let's
give her the kind of insights Bill Poser did, which can be used with any
dictionary programs someone has learned to use.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I happen to be a lexicographer myself. Working with fluent speakers we have
co-authored a nice dictionary with 18,000 entries of the Cheyenne language. The
language community likes it and uses it. Over the 30 years of working with the
database we managed it with a word processor to start with, then moved to
Shoebox, and Toolbox, and now Lexique Pro. I agree with those who have mentioned
the importance of including semantic domains however the database is managed.
Lexique Pro handles this fine. I can also handle other lexical relationships
with Lexique Pro, including singulars and plurals, diminutives and
non-diminutives, homonyms, variants forms, etc. I wish I had the mental energy
at my age to learn Fieldworks but I don't. I need to save my own energy and time
for the data.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I suggest that the same thing is true for mother tongue speakers of
languages. They have the advantage so many of us do not have, namely, insights
into their own languages and a sense of what their own language community wants
and needs.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Lexique Pro is a good program, especially for someone like Natalie who has
spent time learning to work with the Shoebox-formatted database. (And even
Lexique Pro is complicated enough that it typically requires a consultant to
help set it up to work with a particular language and answer questions that come
up when the focus turns to data management.) WeSay is a good program for
language communities to use. And the point can come for language communities who
wish and have individuals who are ready, to move to software like Fieldworks.
But they will need workshop support (I understand that the University of Texas
at Arlington is providing some of that support to Native Americans now) and
easy-to-reach software consultants. Until then, let's keep giving the good
suggestions which fit in with what the felt needs of a language community
are.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I would like to see some experiments done to determine which dictionary
software programs are most intuitive for mother tongue speakers around the world
to use. My fear, from my own experience, is that we make programs so complicated
that they become a focus of attention instead of the wonderful data and
relationships among the items within the database. It seems to me that the most
valuable activity a language community that wants to make a dictionary can do is
one in which they quickly discover the words in their own language through
semantic relationships, database development workshops of the kind that Ron Moe
has conducted:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><A title=http://www-01.sil.org/sil/news/2012/rapid-word-collection.htm
href="http://www-01.sil.org/sil/news/2012/rapid-word-collection.htm">http://www-01.sil.org/sil/news/2012/rapid-word-collection.htm</A></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I realize that Fieldworks attempts to capture the relationships discovered
through semantically-based lexical discovery. But Fieldworks still is a
complicated computer program, not a community activity that gathers the data.
Let's keep things in their right sequence and not complicate the recording
process with computer programs that can overwhelm sometimes even for those of us
who have been working with geeky computer programs for many years.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Wayne
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