Online etymological databases

[Jon Patrick]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

    Date:       Sun, 22 Aug 1999 20:34:11 -0400 (EDT)
    From:       Sean Crist <kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu>

    On Thu, 12 Aug 1999, Jon Patrick wrote:

    > Our method should be useful to appraise competing reconstructions of
    > earlier languages,say Indoeuropean, however to date we have not been able
    > to find the necessary data compiled in one place to easily apply it.
    > Should anyone have a good database of appropriate data we would be happy
    > to submit it to our methods.

    It doesn't exist yet.  I'm slowly working on one for Germanic, and there's
    another effort which is working on one for all of Indo-European.
    This latter effort is mostly being carried out by people in Holland.  I
    don't have their URL handy, but a web search should turn it up.

I wish to commend Sean Crist's proposal's for setting up etymological
dictionaries. There is no need for me to respond to his individual items as I
am pleased to know of them and agree with him.
My suggestion is that some effort be put into identifying the groups working
on database resources and to set up a Workshop at one of the major conferences
to discuss the issues in getting this material into electronic form and
particularly setting some guidelines for minimum information and basic
formats. Without some unification of methods the data will exist but be
difficult to use. I have had a plenty of experience at trying to get data from
a variety of sources into a single system and it is a nasty problem. A little
talking now will produce great economy of effort further downstream.
 cheers
Jon
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