[Lexicog] Re: Kirrkirr and Shoebox/Toolbox

[Koontz John E]

On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Mike Maxwell wrote:
> The FieldWorks group was intending to incorporate the categories in a
> number of works (such as the "Textbooks in Cambridge" series--I'm
> thinking particularly of the books with titles like "Tense", "Aspect",
> "Number", "Person" and "Case").

After wrestling briefly with a few schemes like this I've come to believe
that anything one does in this line is either too limited or too soon out
of date or too cumbersome.  Usually all of these at once.  You can't fix a
fundamentally wrong approach by being encyclopaedic about it.  I think
a better approach is to come up with data structures that accomodate any useful
terminology, with the terminology included in the data along with the
form.  In other words, rather than providing singular and plural fields
allow for multiple generic formname-form pairs of fields.

Trying to work in some or any specific terminology is like providing
fields named for the typeface to be used to print them.  A system likes
this should specify the logic of the situation, not the superficies,
whether typographical or linguistic.  I think what's universal in the end
is whether a field is a citation form or an associated stem included to
illustrate allomorphy or non-productive formations, etc., not what kind of
grammatical function it has.

It was mentioned earlier in this thread that one representation (relation
database)  might be more efficient for computation use in a particular
tool, while another, OLIF, might be more suited to exchange.  A somewhat
similar issue might arise in regard to field kinds.  While an archival or
exchange version might specify things in the generic terms I've suggested,
input mechanisms should probably use the contents of formname as a prompt
and not prompt the user for the form name each time.



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