Lars Aronsson wrote:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Because it is important to know for a noun what
its gender is.
Sorry if I've not been following UW discussions, but the gender of
words can and have changed over time. How will UW address this?
Can I, for example, indicate that a certain word had a male gender
in the 17th, 18th, 19th century, but neuter in the 20th? And that
in 1890-1920 the percentage of people who used male or neuter
gradually shifted?
In a Wikipedia or Wiktionary article, these complex relations and
exceptional cases can be described in plain text, as I did in the
previous paragraph. But how do you express them in a relational
database schema?
And what if you discover such complex relations as the project
develops, what is the UW strategy for modifying the schema over
time? Right now you seem to be designing an "ultimate" schema
that will then be frozen and kept static for all time. The very
name of the UW project suggests this kind of thinking, and to me
that is about as foreign as marxism.
Hoi,
At this moment in time there is no room defined for free format text. It
is fairly easy to allow for some free text fields at some level. It will
be fairly straightforward to add a field certainly when it has no
relation to anywhere else. The requirements for information are fairly
minimal. A Spelling can only be added if you know what language it is
in.. A Word needs a Spelling and a Meaning needs one Word. Translations
require this Meaning and so do synonyms. After this extra information
can be added.
Changes over time for genders is not in the database and percentages of
people that use a particular form are not in there as well. When the
Ultimate Wiktionary is live it will be possible to add this kind of data
to the database. It will require planning, testing and propably a
conversion. It may be added when we want to include this.
The idea of Ultimate Wiktionary grew out of the frustration of all these
wiktionaries all wanting the same thing, all having to add the same
things without the benefit of the efforts of the other wiktionaries.
First we experimented with templates, Technically the most interesting
stuff can be seen on the la.wiktionary, Then we decided that a database
would allow us to share the benefits of the work done on wiktionary
content. As the Dutch spelling will change in August 2006, we added
things like spelling authorities. We have not considered including
changes of gender but I do know this happens in the Dutch language as
well. Statistical numbers is not in there either it has always been
outside my scope. Initially it is very much intended as a dictionary for
contemporary languages. Historical Spelling, Word and Meaning can be
included to some extend but this is more an extra than something that
was planned.
So the design will be set for some time allowing us to learn what it is
we have. It will be changed when we know what to change and why. The
requirements for content will be minimal and improvements will happen
because of a collective effort.
Thanks,
GerardM