Nxaʔamxcín (Moses) Dictionary Blog

Here are a few requests for the Names page on the website:

DONE -exclude Lexical Suffix entries

DONE -fix the display of sic/corr, so that only “Wenatchi” displays, not “WenatcheeWenatchi” (See for example the entry for “Sam George”.)

DONE -put flora (plants) and fauna (animals) in the link text at the top of the page

-separate out the sorting into Nx-Eng and Eng-Nx pages. Ideally, users should be able to view the complete list, or any of the six lists by name type, sorted either by Nxa'amxcin name or by English name. The present setup with Nx and Eng names mixed together in the Name column is somewhat confusing. Continue to sort the Nx-Eng lists based on name tags in prons. For the present, exclude name tags in orths when generating these lists. Sort the Eng-Nx lists based on name tags in defs.

PENDING ECH'S FURTHER DISCUSSION WITH CCT:

Please also generate a printable version of the six lists of names by type. These only need to be sorted alphabetically by Nxa'amxcin name - i.e. only include the name tags within prons when generating these lists. Ideally they would be spreadsheets with the following columns:

Name (pron:seg type= “p”)
Source (following bibl ... if the pron:seg type= “p” is NOT subtype=“i”)
Definition (all defs)
Pronunciation (pron:seg type= “n”)
Source (following bibl)
Word Parts (hyph)

Sarah says:

I think we decided on Monday (talking with Ewa) that you should go ahead and use the full def:segs instead of the glosses in the "get related words" and "other entries containing this morpheme" lists. The glosses are only intended as headwords for the English-Nx word list.

Our example was cìqqnúnn, with the def:seg "I accidentally dug up something". The gloss tags are "dig", "dug", and "accidentally". We want the Nx word to appear (with its def) under all three headwords in the English-Nx word list, but we don't want a learner to look at the "get related words" list and think the word can be used to mean just "accidentally".

DONE, 18Mar13.

I have put a list of feature structure questions for further consideration into the docs folder in the SVN respository. It's called feature_structure_questions_Jan2013.odt.

ECH's paper copy of these questions, with our notes on it, is in the blue folder in the top box of Lexware data!

DONE 2013-02-28.

Our new feature structures for names and loanwords are displaying on the website as NAME: TRUE and LOANWORD:TRUE.

Please hide the :TRUE part of these features from the website display.

Just came across an example where:

<phr type="n">√ƛʼécʼ-p=ap Račəméntən</phr>

got autophonemicized to:

<phr type="p" subtype="i">√ƛʼícʼ-p=ap ʔḥacmíntn</phr>

The capital R was correctly changed to ḥ, but where did the glottal stop come from? Did the "insert glottal stop before a word-initial vowel" rule somehow apply between the removal of the R and the addition of the ḥ?

Hmmm.

There are 15 other instances of word initial ʔḥ generated from R in the data. I can just fix them with find-and-replace, but I'm curious about how they were generated.

DONE 2013-02-28.

Please adjust the display of the contributors' roles. Currently, "Fluent Speaker" and "Elder" appear to have a space after them, so for contributors who are both, we see Fluent Speaker space comma space Elder space.

1) In the email that pops up when EB or SC clicks on an Email link, please add the following fields to the template:

Date:
Speaker:
Writer:
Typist:
Comments:

2) Please send the emails from this page to skell@uvic.ca and caitlinb@uvic.ca as well as ECH and MDH.

3) The question in the entry for "Paschal Sherman" is not showing up on the website, although it's there in the xml file. SMK can't figure out why ...

4) ECH needs a way to prioritize the Questions for Elders – e.g., questions on lexical suffixes are low priority.

5) If we start to get a large volume of feedback coming from the community, ECH would like a tool for speeding up entry of responses. Here are some initial ideas ...

-responses to Questions for Elders would appear on a new page on the website, instead of coming as email responses

-for each response, the editor (likely ECH or SMK) could select from options like

-ignore
-defer
-add to existing entry as editorial note
-add to existing entry as new <def>
-add to existing <def> as new <bibl>
-add to existing entry as new pron:seg type=“n”
-add whole new entry in new-data-2013.xml

-Please add a menu button for accessing the Verbs page.

-Please make the page title “Verb list” instead of “Word list”.

-Add an explanatory line below the title: This list includes the verb forms recorded in Dale Kinkade's Nxaʔamxcín materials.

-We don't want to combine the verb list with the Questions for Elders page. But we do need a way to mark which verb forms EB, SC, and PCS have already reviewed. SMK suggests the following:

If an entry contains psn:EB, psn:SC, or psn:PCS (i.e., they have commented on it, and we have recorded their input in the entry), flag it on the verbs page as reviewed – perhaps with an icon (a checkmark?) next to the editing status “traffic light”?

-We will eventually add a separate verb paradigms page.

-We've figured out a better way to identify verbs in the data, based on the transitive object and subject endings. Now we just need to finalize our list of those endings, and figure out how to work around endings like “-n” which could be one of many morphemes.

DONE

1)

Process date tags such as the following to show the @when attribute when the date tag has no text in it.

<bibl corresp="psn:PCS">PCS <date when="2013-02-06"></date></bibl>

2) Roles of contributors:

Please make the full description appear after each person's name on the Contributors page.

EB distinguishes "Elders" who have significant cultural knowledge, and "Fluent Speakers" who have language knowledge. So some of the contributors will be one or the other, and some could be both.

SMK assigned me these tasks:

1) Please sort the names with the following headings, using the tags in the pron:seg type="p"?

Personal Names (persName)

Place Names (placeName)

Tribes (orgName) 

People in Stories (name type="storyPeople")

Animals (name type="fauna")

Plants (name type="flora")

2) Printable PDF view of the names page for MM and SB to work from - Full view, with the entries expanded. MM needs to be able to see:

• phonemic transcription with its bibl
• phonetic transcriptions with their bibls
• hyph
• all defs and their bibls

She will also need a printable view of the Contributors page.

3) Get the orthography working. (Note: MM does not use the community orthography, but rather MDK's! ECH will ask GM what orthography SB uses.)

4) DONE One thing which arises from yesterday's feedback from SC is that we should hide glosses with type="i" from the Moses-English displays.

For example, in the verbs list we currrently see:

ʔacḥámˀsn I stopped him from getting in a fight, forbid, stop

"Forbid" and "stop" are inferred glosses that I added for the purpose of creating the English-Moses word list, but they're not direct translations of ʔacḥámˀsn. So of course SC and PC replied that "forbid" and "stop" should be removed. Can you please hide the inferred glosses from all the Moses-English pages?

The English-Moses word list is working correctly, in that ʔacḥámˀsn appears under the English headwords "forbid" and "stop", as well as the more specific "stopped".