[Lexicog] Potential words

[dick_watson at SIL.ORG]

Hi Richard,

I used this method with a Mon-Khmer language many years ago just to 
collect words, but I also checked it against my CVC distribution chart and 
found certain combinations that were avoided for unknown reasons--maybe 
they didn't sound good or carried bad connotations--and certain areas for 
special use. The one that I remember is that children's given names shared 
an area on the distribution chart that was not used for anything else. 
This was particularly interesting because their is a sanction against 
using the same name as anyone else known to be living or dead. I guess 
that a population explosion could force them into using other areas for 
making names.

Dick








Hi Richard,

I did this kind of thing in the early days of our language project in PNG. 
I had worked out the consonant and vowel phonemes for Amele and that word 
roots could be one, two or three syllables. I then had someone at Ukarumpa 
High School write a program (this was in 1978) to generate possible word 
roots in Amele based on the phoneme inventory and the syllable patterns. 
The lists for the one and two syllable roots weren't too long but the list 
for the three syllable roots was enormous! I then distributed these lists 
to various Amele people for them to try and identify actual word roots. 
They thought this was great fun. But the hard work was then confirming 
that the roots indicated were actual words and what their meaning and 
usage were.

Another SIL member I know (who I met again just recently) used the same 
method for their language project. He said when he gave the lists out to 
people one of the men asked, "Do you want all the dirty words too?"

But as I recall, this method of "generating" words in a language was 
somewhat frowned upon by the linguistic establishment in SIL-PNG in those 
days. But I found I got a lot of words that I might not have got hold of 
otherwise - such as taboo words.

I believe there is software available in SIL now that can do this kind of 
thing for you. You don't have to ask a high schooler to do it for you. Oh, 
and the people you are working with need to be literate in their own 
language.

John Roberts



Richard Gravina wrote: 
I'm interested in knowing more about the method of data collection based 
on 'potential' words. This is where you create lists of artificial words 
by randomly combining letters, and then go through the lists with native 
speakers to see if the words actually exist in the language.
 
Does anyone have any experience of using this? Do you know of any 
resources or software that would help?
 
Richard Gravina



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