Nxaʔamxcín (Moses) Dictionary Blog

MDH: I BELIEVE THIS IS FUNCTIONAL AS OF 2014-03-05.

Here's a further explication of how to generate and format the "translated hyph", as proposed in this blog:

http://hcmc.uvic.ca/blogs/index.php?blog=10&p=11777&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

-print each component morpheme's <label>, if it has one
-if it has no <label>, print the first <gloss> in the entry

-if the gloss includes more than one word, separate them with periods, as in: √look.for

-if it has no <gloss>, just print the contents of the <m>, with no question mark or special formatting

-separate the hyph and the translated hyph with the bullet character, • U2022, size 8 font

-format the contents of <label>s in small caps. (We will still use full capitals at the beginning of Sbj, Obj, and Poss, because they sometimes occur in combination with other labels – e.g. 1sgSbjTr. We will also use full capitals for Tr and Intr when they occur in combination with other labels.)

-where an <m> corresponds to more than one morpheme, separate the labels with periods, as in:

[[√ƛʼaʔá-n-n • √look.for-ctl-tr.3Obj.1sgSbjTr]]

ECH will go through and check consistency of abbreviations in defs, notes and xrs in all 5 affix files, pron, and particles.

Documenting some more decisions which will affect the final form of the print dictionary.

1) Cits for affixes

For the time being, we are suppressing cits for affixes - that is, cits which have not been autophonemicized. It's on our To Do list to go through and check that all these cits exist elsewhere as full entries. We will decide how or whether to display cits for affixes later. We can harvest examples from entries containing each affix, and either print them as full cits, or print page references to their full entry. If there is not enough space to print all cits for affixes and keep the dictionary under 1000 pages, we could just print a few cits for each affix, or leave them out entirely. To be decided.

2) Names

-placeNames, orgNames, flora, fauna, and StoryPeople are to be included in the main dictionary as regular entries

-personal names are to be excluded from main dictionary and placed in a separate appendix (if we have enough space in the final print version). Include hyph. SMK has emailed EB to confirm these instructions, 4Mar14. Awaiting response.

If we go with the Personal Names appendix, would it be possible to continue to print cross-references to personal names, and add a page number pointer to the appendix?

If not, we should search for all <xr>s which contain a pointer to a persName xml:lang="col", and go through and make sure the refs are in their own separate <xr> tags. There shouldn't be a lot of these.

MDH: I BELIEVE THIS IS FUNCTIONAL AS OF 2014-03-05.

All affix entries should include delimiters adjacent to the orth. Here's how to determine what delimiters to use where:

(Infixes will require some delicate handling, as they are allomorphs of prefixes or suffixes. This is encoded with @n values in the <form> and <symbol> tags.)

- if the affix entry contains <f name="positionType"><symbol value="infix"/></f>, put < before the orth, and > after the orth

-ELSE if the affix entry contains <f name="positionType"><symbol value="suffix"/></f>, put the delimiter before the orth

-ELSE if the affix entry contains <f name="positionType"><symbol value="prefix"/></f>, put the delimiter after the orth

AND THEN

- if the affix entry contains <f name="derivationalType"><symbol value="lexical"/></f>, use =

-ELSE if the affix entry contains <f name="derivationalType"><symbol value="reduplicative"/></f>, use +

-ELSE for any other entry in the five affix files, use -

MDH: I believe this is done as of 2014-03-14.

-grammatical affixes, lexical affixes, clitics, particles, and inferred roots will all appear with full entries in the main alphabetical dictionary

-we will also have four appendices, which will list

-all grammatical affixes (those in the five affix xml files)
-all lexical affixes (from lex-pref.xml and lex-suf.xml)
-all clitics (pron.xml) and particles (particles.xml),
-all roots (but not stems)
(i.e. anything with <f name="baseType"> <symbol value="root"/></f>)

... with brief pointers to their full entries in the main alphabetical dictionary

-place these appendices before the morpheme index.

-the pointers will include orth, pron:seg type="p", def:seg, and page reference, with the same formatting as in the main dictionary entries

This is a lower-priority task to be done after more data is edited.

We are hoping to use superscript numbers to distinguish homophonous roots. This presents some challenges.

One is that in Aboriginal Serif, superscript 1 (U2071) is i. However, U00B9 (185) seems to provide a superscript 1 also.

The other question is HOW to generate these superscript numbers from our data. If we were vigilant about standardly naming the xml:ids of homophonous roots with _#, could you print the number in superscript after the orth of the root in the entry, MDH?

For example, we current have four roots with the phonemic transcription kʼʷəƛʼ. Their xml:ids are

"kʼWəƛʼ"
"kʼWəƛʼ_2"
"kʼWəƛʼ_3"
"kʼWəƛʼ_4"

If we renamed the first one "kʼWəƛʼ_1", could you look for the number in the xml:id and use it to add a superscript number after the orth, and after references to the root in <xr>s?

Note for MDH: The current sort works on orths; to sort collections of numbered entries, the orth passed to the sort function will have to have the appended numeral from the xml:id.

Note to selves: We also need subscript 1 and 2 for reduplicants in hyphs. MDH has asked Chris Harvey to add them to AbSerif. If Chris does not respond, an alternative would be for MDH to use the subscript characters from another serif font.

This is the first of several blog posts re: formatting for the print dictionary. I am posting this information here to help us remember what we decided, and why!

1) Space-saving abbreviations:

--Replace the following content before printing <note>s:

-Suggested form. with «s.f.»

-Meaning unclear. with «no def.»

-any <note> beginning with "Definition inferred" with «def. inf.»

--For entries with name or loanword features - i.e.

<f name="name"><binary value="true"/></f>

and/or

<f name="loanword"><binary value="true"/></f>

print the following abbreviations immediately after the phonemic transcription

«nm.» for names

«lw.» for loanwords

--Inferred root and stem entries include one of the following editorial <note>s:

Root entry added based on attested complex forms.
Stem entry added based on attested complex forms.

-Suppress these notes, and put an asterisk (not bold) after the <orth> when the inferred entries appear in the main dictionary, root appendix, and morpheme index.

2) Orth the content of <ref>s in <xr>s too.

3) More about entries with multiple forms:

The current handling of entries with multiple <form>s looks great. Please add:

-a space between the orth and the page reference in the secondary entry (DONE, MDH 4Mar14)

-if an entry has multiple <form>s with @type="allomorph", separate these allomorphs with a tilde ~ (surrounded by spaces) in the main and secondary entries - e.g.:

=úlʼəxʷ /úlˀəxʷ/ ~ =lʼəxʷ /lˀəxʷ/

-DO NOT create secondary entries for allomorphs of affixes - that is, for <form>s with @type="allomorph" within the five affix files, pron.xml, and lex-suf.xml

Worked with the team to help complete the IRG application, which went in at the end of the day. In the process we discovered a lot of useful material that will contribute to the article.

Copyedit on the article, and some discussion of the IRG application (more work to do on that on Monday).

Lots of discussion and testing of various suggestions today, as well as the following major changes:

• Added secondary entries for variant forms, pointing to the root entry.
• Added the English-Moses gloss index.
• Rejigged the margins and added some lines to clean up the layout and save pages.
• Suppressed cits which have no orthable phonemic representation.

Lots of small tweaks and improvements too. It's looking good.

So we're now working with PDF instead of plain text on the index formatting. Lots of other updates to the dictionary entry display etc. too.