[Lexicog] Digest Number 343

[Allan Johnson]

> However, I'm not certain I answered your original question, in which you
> also talked about having multiple wordforms in the hierarchy.  I'm not
> sure if these wordforms are irregular forms, or what.  Putting my
> uncertainty more concretely, why do you want to have wordforms inside a
> lex entry, if the citation form is itself a wordform?  Is it because you
> want to include irregular forms, which will be relevant to one POS but
> not another?  Maybe an example would help me understand...

I found an example that might be helpful.  The attached file shows an entry
in a sense-primary PLB format, followed by the same information in a
form-primary MDF format.  Both forms use wordforms inside a lexical entry.
The lexeme is a root (which often will also be a wordform as in this case,
but not always), and its associated wordforms are various inflections or
derivations of this root.

The sense-primary format allows wordforms to be grouped according to a
semantic feature that they share, which in the case of senses 3 & 4 appears
to be the idea of winning vs. losing.  The form-primary format is showing
the wordforms in a grammatically relevant order.  For some uses of the
dictionary it might be more helpful to simply put these wordforms in an
alphabetical order.

The first format is supported by the PLB dictionary standard, although I
don't know if our dictionaries have often been actually published with full
wordforms listed in this way.  To save space, I think often just affixes
have been shown rather than full word forms, saving the full word forms
just for irregular cases.  Personally, I like a dictionary that shows me
full word forms like this.  It seems less abstract; more accessible.  There
is that problem of taking up too many pages in a printed version of the
dictionary.  But I think the problem of size should be a lot less relevant
when it comes to electronically searchable dictionaries intended for
internet access.

Allan J.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Maxwell" <maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu>
To: <lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, May 23, 2005 9:49 PM
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] Digest Number 343


> Allan Johnson wrote:
> > Yes, I think that's what I'm saying - not like a thesaurus, but
arranged
> > semantically just within each main entry - by meaning rather than by
form.
> > ...
> > And a similar question - could a database be designed that would allow
both
> > a Standard MDF view and a PLB view (or Alternate MDF view) of the same
> > data?
>
> A rather belated reply--I think Mike Sangay covered the database theory
> behind it.
>
> When last I looked, the FieldWorks lex db structure will support
> multiple way of viewing lexemes.  Specifically, lexemes are treated as
> having a bunch of POSs (actually, the structure is considerably richer
> than just POS) and a bunch of senses.  Each sub-part of a lex entry
> would then be a combination of one of those POSs with one of those
> senses.  That allows you to choose whichever way of grouping the
> sub-parts you prefer: either group first by POS, and secondarily by
sense:
>
>     foobar 1. (noun) (a) left-handed monkey wrench.  (b) shore line.
>     2. (verb) (a) to go on a wild goose chase.  (b) to send someone
>     to look for a left-handed monkey wrench.
>
> or vice versa.
>
> However, I'm not certain I answered your original question, in which you
> also talked about having multiple wordforms in the hierarchy.  I'm not
> sure if these wordforms are irregular forms, or what.  Putting my
> uncertainty more concretely, why do you want to have wordforms inside a
> lex entry, if the citation form is itself a wordform?  Is it because you
> want to include irregular forms, which will be relevant to one POS but
> not another?  Maybe an example would help me understand...
>
> --
> Mike Maxwell
> Linguistic Data Consortium
> maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu
>


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