On Thursday 12 February 2004 00:25, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Now, if you
have bothered to read all this, you might as well spend just a
bit more time to tell me what do you mean about it. I would be especially
grateful if someone could find something that cannot fit into this kind
of a dictionary. I already see a possible flaw; that is, that concept 1
in some cultures is not a mass concept; but I am certain that this could
be overcome.
Respectfully, may I call this scheme hair-brained, though I know that
"hair" in that expression is a common error when "hare" should be
used.
At least it's naïve. People don't read instructions except as an
absolute last resort. When they would need to have such complicated
instruction to understand a difference in meaning focused on one concept
in only 2 languages they would put the explanation down and do something
Well, I hope that final interface won't be as complicated as it could get.
When you add a new word you would probably search if it exist in another
language. If it does, you would just connect the new word with its already
defined meaning. Any grammatical shapes, such as plural, declensions, etc.
would be derived from that word, rather then inserted separately. If it
doesn't exist, you would create a new word and a new basic concept and
connect them (this connecting would be done by the software; everything that
you would have to do is to type the word on the left, meaning on the right,
select the word's type and language, and click on 'Submit'). The hardest case
might occur when a word does already exist, but with a slightly different
meaning; then, you would probably "split" an existing meaning in two or join
it with another.
else. Serbian and Croatian are much more closely
related, but I'm sure
that the subtleties that make them different to explain, especially to
an English speaker who doesn't know much about either one.
Not really, and I think that all subtleties could be handled with this notion
of concepts vs. basic concepts.
Among the expressions which use hair in English we
have
The gun has a hair trigger = The trigger mechanism is very sensitive
to the slightest pressure
He's got him by the short hairs = he's got him in a difficult
position that is equal to pulling on his pubic hairs
I had some of the hair of the dog that bit me = I had some of what I
drank last night to help relieve the hangover.
How's that for examples to start with? :-)
All right, but these are expressions. They would be added to writings table,
their meanings to basics table, so it is possible.
The point is that language structure is extremely
complicated, and in
much of what matters there is rarely a simple one-to-one correspondence
between languages. That's often why machine translations look so much
like they came from a machine.
This scheme allows for correspondences that are not on-to-one: many-to-one,
one-to-many, even half-to-half.