Mark Williamson wrote:
Hi Gerard,
Signed languages are completely independent systems, and are separate languages from spoken languages, different in grammar, syntax, and the like. Unfortunately, there is no universally-agreed-upon method for transcribing signed languages.
There are a few possibilities here.
- Choose a particular transcription system. Top of the list would be
Stokoe, and Sutton Sign Writing; HamNoSys is also possible but is mostly used by linguists while the other two are used more widely by people who use it as their everyday language.
It being the Ultimate Wiktionary, I would prefer not make a choise and have them all.
- Use multimedia. We can upload videos of people signing a particular
word. Note that some signed languages also have conjugations and inflections. However, this will leave a problem of headwords -- how do you look up a word in a signed language? Which leads to the third option,
When you look at the ERD it is explicitly indicated by the Conju/Decli-Word table what the Headword is. This is done for any language and it means that it is by practice and not design that in most languages the infinitive will be the Headword. Consequently, when one word is found the other will be also shown in a format that may need some screen design per type of conjugation or declination.
- Introduce our own notation system. This is impractical and unlikely
to work well. I suggest that instead, we adopt HamNoSys for lookup purposes, although it is not represented by Unicode, we can try an ASCII implementation.
Introducing our own notation system is not an option. To a very large extend I want deaf people involved and they can sort it out. The only involvement I may have is see if it is possible to implement it within the confines of UW.
Regarding "dialects" of Chinese and Arabic, that is very simple. Treat them as separate languages. While certainly most often people write in "Standard Arabic" or "Standard Chinese", it is also possible to write in the local vernacular. This tends to be done more with Arabic, but is possible with either. With Chinese, you only see it very often with Cantonese, other varieties are occasionally but you are more likely to find a Bible translation in them than a newspaper.
One way I am thinking is that there are often transcriptions of these dialects / languages. I am happy to have these as well as long as I can quote an authority who did the transcribing. Bible translations are one of the most important resources for rare languages, we will have at some stage a lot of Bible texts that we will analyse for its content. It may help us create large translation memories and translation glossaries.
I hope very much that you will not restrict languages to those which appear on the ISO 639-3 list. It has many shortcomings and is very, very, very disappointing -- it would not allow for separate entries for Yavapai, Hualapai, and Havasupai (it has only one code for them all), even though they are very much different languages, and it by no means includes all the languages of the world. It also separates between Moroccan, Tunisian, and Algerian Arabic, when they're really nearly identical.
With the design of the UW I have no technical restriction on what languages and dialects I add. I would insert Valkenburgs (a Limburgian dialect) as readily as any other language. If there is an intrest and if it is no original research (ie not a newly created language) I am happy to have it. When people can destinguish Maroccan from Tunesian etc I am happy to include them if only to have the different pronunciation .. The only thing I need is to explicitly have an agreed code for the languages/dialects that the WMF agrees on. This code will be very much internal but it needs to exist and be agreed upon. I also am thinking of a project that should have us hear many dialects from the translation of one A4 written text. The thing is to find an interesting text, a short story preferably and have it spoken and recorded by the dialects / languages that we are going to include.
Thanks Mark, Gerard
Mark
On 20/07/05, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Timwi wrote:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
I would welcome your comments about the ERD that I posted here http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:ERD.jpg
Looks interesting, but is extremely bare. It would do well with a bit of documentation. For much of it, the purpose isn't entirely clear. I'm particularly confused as to why "Language", "Word" and "Meaning" are each duplicated.
Hoi, There is some documentation here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Wiktionary_data_design and http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Wiktionary_decisions_on_its_usage here. The duplication reflects that there is at least one table that has two relations to the same table. Language refers to itself for dialects, Word refers through Conju/Decli (conjucation or declinations) to a headword and derived words, Meaning is related through "Relations" this is to allow for thesaurus like structures.
One reason why it is not as much documented as I would like is, because I am still working on the structure. At this moment I am thinking hard on how to include signed languages and the spoken dialects of the Chinese and Arabic written language.
Thanks, GerardM