[Lexicog] etymology (was Knowledge Help!!! Database for Dictionary)

[Ron Moe]

Indicating etymology is a complicated task. For some languages there is very
little information available and the task is relatively straightforward.
Depending on your situation, the following may apply:

1. If the language is an isolate, there may be no possibility of indicating
the history of an inherited word. (A good historical linguist may be able to
deduce some historical changes from internal evidence, but this information
is most likely systematic and is better included in a grammar.)

2. If there is a history of writing, you may be able to refer to an archaic
literary form. For instance in English we have literature from Middle
English and Old English and can cite forms from both periods.
sun n. ... [Middle English sonne, sunne, Old English sunne]

3. If the language belongs to a language family and there is a historical
reconstruction of the family, you can refer to a reconstructed form. You
should cite the published source of reconstructed forms in your
introduction. I don't know for sure, but I believe most, if not all,
language families have been reconstructed.
sun n. ... [Middle English sonne, sunne, Old English sunne, PIE sawel]

4. If there are reconstructions for different historical levels, you can
cite different historical forms. For instance in English we can often cite a
proto-Germanic form and a proto-Indo-European form.
sun n. ... [Middle English sonne, sunne, Old English sunne, Germanic,
sunnon, PIE sawel]

5. If a word is borrowed, you can cite the source language, the form in the
source language, and if possible the approximate time when the word was
borrowed. This can get very complicated and requires a good understanding of
the history of both languages.
sugar n. ... [Middle English suker, sugre, from Old French sukere, zuchre,
from Old Italian zucchero, from Medieval Latin zuccarum, succarum, from
Arabic sukkar, from Persian shakar, from Prakrit sakkara, from Sanskrit
sarkara, pebble, gravel, sugar.]

6. Since the etymology of a word is its history, you have to decide how much
of a word's history you want to include. You may choose to merely indicate
the proto form of a word or include intermediate forms.
moon n. ... [PIE me-]
(or)
moon n. ... [Middle English moone, mon, Old English mona, Germanic maenon,
extended and suffixed form men-en- 'moon, month (an ancient and universal
measure of time)' of PIE me- 'to measure'.]

Likewise, you may choose to merely indicate the source language of a
borrowed word or its entire history.
helium n. ... [from New Latin]
(or)
helium n. ... [New Latin, from Greek helios, the sun (the element was first
discovered in an examination of the solar spectrum), suffixed form sawel-yo-
of PIE sawel.]

Most dictionary software is not designed to handle all this complexity. For
instance MDF has the following fields:

\et etymology (proto form)
\eg etymology gloss (gloss of the proto form)
\ec etymology comment (a non-printing field)
\es etymology source (bibliographical reference)
\bw borrowed word/loan (used for denoting the source language of a borrowed
word)

This is entirely insufficient to handle an extended discussion of the
history of a word. However it is sufficient if you have very limited
information or choose to limit the amount of etymological information
included in your dictionary.

If you want to include extended information, it is helpful to separate the
information into a set of fields. Since historical levels are ordered, you
can set up a series of fields to systematically handle each level:

\eme etymology-Middle English
\eoe etymology-Old English
\ege etymology-Germanic
\epf etymology-proto form
\epg etymology-proto gloss

However it is likely that the complexity of providing glosses and
explanatory comments will overwhelm any attempt at making the etymology
section systematic. It is better to merely have a single etymology field in
which you present the etymology in sentence format. If you want to separate
out the various forms, it is better to have a user-defined, non-printing
field for each kind of information that you want to access:

\lx moon
\et Middle English moone, mon, Old English mona, Germanic maenon, extended
and suffixed form men-en- 'moon, month (an ancient and universal measure of
time)' of PIE me- 'to measure'.
\eme moone, mon
\eoe mona
\ege maenon
\epf me-
\epg to measure

(Data for examples was taken from the American Heritage Dictionary.)

Ron Moe

  -----Original Message-----
  From: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
[mailto:lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of arun
  Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2005 5:37 AM
  To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
  Subject: [Lexicog] Knowledge Help!!! Database for Dictionary


  Hi. I am thinking of creating a free, flexible and friendly software in VB
for a dictionary. Actually it is a dictionary cum word game package.

  I have some ideas, but I need to interact and find out more about how to
incorporate a database for a dictionary. For now, I've created a structure
for aword entry refering the Compact Oxford Dictionary. I plan to include
entry for an etymology.

  Is it  advisable to construe the etymology as such in terms levels? Each
level is indicative of the historical period to which a particular word root
belongs to. So if a root has more origins each of them is placed in a kind
of hierarcial sequence; the recent roots first and the older origins last...

  Anyway there are so many labels like part of speech, regional usage, and
abbreviations, etc. How does one incorporate this into  the  database?



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