[lg policy] Webster's lays down the law

[dzo at BISHARAT.NET]

Interesting post. A couple of questions:

1) What other kinds references or language tools (as in information technology) might one use to scope the range of meaning on terms, semantic fields, relative usage of (near-)synonyms, etc.? Thesaurus is an obvious one. On the web there are various sites with dictionaries or aggregating definitions from other sites, though generally reflecting current usage or user input, and without pretense of authority. Besides those, there are various tools for analysis of text. 

Maybe this first question should be: How is digitization of text multiplying the ways we can assess meanings of words and expressions? (And whether the SC justices avail themselves of anything beyond bound dictionaries?)  
2) I recently encountered the term "controlled vocabulary" which is apparently used in some governmental and professional areas to cover a lexicon of agreed upon standard terms for aspects of their work (for interoperability, reliability of communication in contexts where a range of meaning is not productive). These are naturally associated with fairly fixed definitions. (Maybe the justices are seeking such a tool for Constitutional law?) 

So the second question is: Is there a good, if not yet definitive, comparative glossary of types of word references and text analysis tools? Thinking here of a guide to what must be seen as an evolving field in which printed dictionaries as we have known them are but one part, and resources for analyzing meanings of what is/was written are increasingly sophisticated. 
Don Osborn 



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-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis Baron <debaron at illinois.edu>
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Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2011 21:09:39 
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Subject: [lg policy] Webster's lays down the law

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