[Lexicog] a question about profession

Fri Mar 17 22:20:21 UTC 2006

I've been on this list from the beginning, but will take this opportunity to
re-introduce myself and give you an update on my current activities. I'm a
linguistics consultant with SIL. I have worked on dictionaries in the
Philippines, eastern Africa (particularly Bantu), and Koine (ancient) Greek.
For the last five years I have been seeking ways to facilitate the
development of dictionaries for minority languages. I compiled a list of
semantic domains that can be used to collect words and classify a
dictionary. Approximately 200 language development projects around the world
have used the list to collect words. The average results are in the range of
10,000-12,000 words collected in a two week workshop, but recently someone
collected 23,000 words in two weeks. I've called the method the "Dictionary
Development Program". (I recently renamed it "Dictionary Development
Process" because it is a method rather than a software program. The old name
was causing confusion.) You can download the materials and instructions for
using the method on the DDP website
http://www.sil.org/computing/ddp/index.htm.

It became clear to me that it would be more efficient to develop a
dictionary by working on one field at a time, rather than one entry at a
time. It proved possible to automate the process of filling in many fields
using computer tools. However it also proved to be difficult to do so in a
user friendly way that was easy for most lexicographers. Fortunately SIL is
developing a new set of software tools called FieldWorks. FieldWorks is
designed to replace Shoebox and will enable field workers to manage their
anthropology notes, manage their dictionary database, interlinearize texts,
and much more. The FieldWorks programmers were kind enough to integrate DDP
into FieldWorks. A beta version of FieldWorks will be released in April and
version 1 is slated to come out in October.

Having had a hand in developing the dictionary side of FieldWorks, it is
difficult to be impartial. But it is my opinion that FieldWorks will be a
huge improvement over Shoebox. We have worked hard to make it both powerful
and user friendly. One of the major innovations of FieldWorks is to
implement a set of bulk edit operations. You will very likely be familiar
with the "Find and replace" function in Word. This is an example of a bulk
edit operation. Many fields in a lexical database are somewhat similar. For
instance many languages require both a lexeme field (for the bare stem) and
a citation form field (which would include inflectional affixes). Rather
than require the lexicographer to type both, FieldWorks enables you to type
one, for instance the citation form, copy all the citation forms into the
lexeme field, and then delete the inflectional affix with a "Find and
replace" function. This enables you to produce a lexeme field for all your
records in a matter of minutes instead of the week that it would take you to
type them all. You can use the bulk edit operations in FieldWorks to produce
an IPA transcription of the citation form, to indicate the part of speech,
to generate a single-word gloss from the definition, to generate a reversal
index from the gloss or definition, and many other similar types of
transformations. This will save you months of tedious typing.

FieldWorks uses unicode and supports non-Roman writing systems. For instance
it is being used in China with Chinese characters and Pinyin.

The program has powerful sort and filter operations. It supports regular
expressions in filter operations, and can run various processors from within
the program, such as CC tables, ICU transducers, TECkit files, and regular
expression files. (I'm only familiar with CC, but techies will appreciate
the power these represent.) You can edit in browse view. The program has an
edit view similar to Shoebox, but simultaneously shows how the entry will
look in print. If you indicate a lexical relation (for instance synonym,
antonym, generic-specific, part-whole) in one entry, the program will
automatically mirror the relation in the corresponding entry.

The parser is already quite powerful and is being improved. So you can build
a text corpus, interlinearize texts, and incorporate insights into your
lexical database. Currently you can only generate a simple concordance, but
enhancements to the concordance program are being planned.

You can import a Shoebox (MDF compliant) or LinguaLinks database into
FieldWorks. Eventually the program will support both print and electronic
publication. In the meantime you can export to LexiquePro.

Best of all, the program will be free. As soon as the program is ready for
general release, I will inform the Lexicography List.

Ron Moe

--- "Justice, Alexander" <ajustice at lmu.edu> wrote:
. . .
> Quite on another tack, I was wondering who tends to populate this list.
> I'm a reference librarian myself, but with growing interest in
> contemporary lexicographal methods and minority / endangered languages.
>
> Alexander Justice
> Reference Librarian
>
> Von der Ahe Library
> Loyola Marymount University
> One LMU Drive
> Los Angeles, CA 90045
>
> 310.338.5947
> ajustice at lmu.edu
>
> http://www.lmu.edu/library
>
>
>
>

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