Fwd: [RNLD] dictionary methods

[Nick Thieberger]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Susan Hanson <susanhanson at y7mail.com>
Date: 20 February 2015 at 16:09
Subject: Re: [RNLD] dictionary methods
To: Nick Thieberger <thien at unimelb.edu.au>, Bill Poser <billposer2 at gmail.com
>


Hi Nick,

Two things that work for me:

1. I use a process I call 'shades of meaning'. I take an existing word in
the dictionary and ask open questions about that word. I use an A3 piece of
paper and write the word in the middle of the page with a circle around it.
Then we do a semantic map related to the word mapping out the shades of
meaning and semantic connections with lines. I have found speakers get what
I'm doing after a while and love to look back through the sheets and add
words. I leave a copy of the sheet with them overnight and they use a
different coloured pen to add words as they think of them.

For example, the word 'dog' has resulted in masses of words and phrases
such as big, mangy, skinny, bark, whine, scratch, yelp, flea, lying under
the bed, jumping, scratching etc

One of the old ladies I work with on Tjupan language loves doing them as
she sees the sheets as a big word game and it really stimulates her
thinking.

2. Semantic domain stimulus pictures: I have a flip folder for each
semantic domain and add pictures from magazines, internet drawings etc as I
find them. Then the speakers and I look through and this helps stimulate
their thinking about a particular domain.

3. What's the same and what's different: I have a set of 60 cards with all
sorts of pictures on them. We shuffle the deck and choose two cards at
random. Placing them face up, we discuss what's the same and what's
different between the two pictures. Results in complex sentences as people
have to explain their thoughts. They may explain physical similarities
through to more abstract relationships. Also usually results in a lot more
laughing as the explanations get wild and wacky. Then put the cards back
and shuffle again.

4. Morphed pictures: A student who work-shadowed me had a series of
pictures which were of morphed animals. So a kangaroo with a sheep's head,
a car with horses legs etc. He asked what people would call the being in
the picture and this resulted in lots of discussion about features and good
complex sentences.

Kind regards
Sue Hanson
044891 7437
--------------------------------------------
On Fri, 20/2/15, Bill Poser <billposer2 at gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [RNLD] dictionary methods
 To: "Nick Thieberger" <thien at unimelb.edu.au>
 Cc: "r-n-l-d at lists.unimelb.edu.au" <r-n-l-d at lists.unimelb.edu.au>
 Received: Friday, 20 February, 2015, 11:16 AM


 I wrote a program
 a while back for generating possible words:

 http://billposer.org/Software/WordGenerator.html

 As for methods of
 finding new words, presumably everybody knows: (a) collect
 texts and search them for words you don't already have;
 (b) if the existing dictionary has example sentences, search
 them for words not already entered as headwords.


 On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at
 7:08 PM, Nick Thieberger <thien at unimelb.edu.au>
 wrote:
 Hi RNLD list,
 I'm going to be working with
 speakers to add words to an existing dictionary of some
 2,800 headwords. I'd be interested to hear of methods
 for finding new words that are not in the dictionary that
 you may have found useful. I know about Rapid Words
 collection (http://www.rapidwords.net/)
 and Ron Moe's Dictionary Development
 Process.
 I'd
 also like to generate a list of all possible words given the
 phonotactics and phonemic inventory, does anyone know of any
 existing systems for doing that?
 I'l summarise responses if you
 want to write to me off-list.
 Thanks,
 Nick
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