Thursday, October 1, 2009
I's and J's and U's and V's
So one problem with Numen is that it doesn't recognize the different possibilities when dealing with I's and J's and U's and V's. As you know, the J and the U were not Classical Latin letters. There has been a lot of back-and-forth over the past 200 years -- some editors prefer the originals and some prefer the modern versions.
But how should Numen deal with this issue? Internally, the computer is more precise and less forgiving than a human, and so in order to provide highly sensitive and accurate searches, the data needs to be "normalized". For example, I recently normalized verbs for consistency by changing all deponent verbs into their active forms and simply marking them as deponent with a data flag. Now, when you search for a deponent verb, the flashcard still shows something like sequor but internally it's stored as sequo. The reasoning here is simple: deponent verbs, regardless of their dictionary form and traditional morphology, still have active participles and their imperfect/pluperfect subjunctives are still formed from active infinitives.
But what about the I's and J's? Those are easy. Convert all the J's to I's, and most Latin readers won't have a problem -- this has been the convention for quite some time now. But then what about the V's and U's? Should I convert all the U's to V's? The opposite is true here: most Latinists would be mildly irritated by this form: uiuus (vivus).
The solution, which would be similar to the one for the deponent problem, would be to mark internally everything with I's and V's but then show the contemporary I's and U's and V's to the end users. That way, the computer can do accurate searches, but users get the information they are used to.
So, in the coming weeks, Numen will undergo this under-the-hood transformation. For the most part, users will never even notice -- except in one area. Searching for uiuus will be the same as searching for vivus!
Labels: accuracy, active, deponents, morphology, orthography, passive
Friday, March 13, 2009
Verb Paradigms
As I promised, I've been working on verb paradigms. As of now, they're up and running. Just search for any Latin word and click "see the complete paradigm".
Most verbs show up just fine, but of course some irregular verbs will show odd glitches. Therefore the data is "beta" but the paradigms should still prove helpful.
Here are some caveats:
Most verbs show up just fine, but of course some irregular verbs will show odd glitches. Therefore the data is "beta" but the paradigms should still prove helpful.
Here are some caveats:
So, work continues! Enjoy.
- certain irregular verbs will have weird forms, for instance, the participles for esse (which didn't exist until late antiquity).
- deponent verbs will show active forms. Remember that deponent verbs do have active participles, and the imperfect subjunctive is formed from the "reconstructed" active infinitive. I'm trying to imagine a way to "gray-out" the unused active forms, but I haven't decided fully on that yet.
- as a result of deponent verbs having "active" forms, they are now stored in the dictionary in their active forms, although on flashcards they will still show their deponent forms. So for instance sequor will be searchable under sequo.
- unusual forms, such as dic, duc, and fac will show up as dice, duce, and face. I haven't implemented and "irregular forms" system yet, even though I've half mapped it out. UPDATE: It turns out that Plautus was fond of using forms like dice, duce, and face even though they were later rejected by Terence.
- UPDATE: Some forms which are not known to exist (in other words, we don't have a record of them) but can logically be deduced will show up on the paradigm charts. For instance, the rare future active participle of volo, voliturus shows up and so does it's non-extant future active infinitive voliturus esse. Many grammar books will not show these forms simply because we don't have a record of them. Nonetheless, it is logical to assume they existed or would have been known to exist during Roman times (at least in theory).
Labels: active, deponents, irregular, paradigms, participles, passive, verbs
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Interface Changes, Keyboard Shortcuts and the Ancient Passive Infinitive
I made a couple of small changes to the search interface, mostly by adding keyboard shortcuts:
Next I coded an inflectional ending for the "ancient passive infinitive" in -ier. Lucretius is fond of using words like vocārier instead of vocarī (Allen and Greenough, New Latin Grammar, 183.4).
- When you visit the page, the cursor is automatically placed in the search box. Just start typing because there's no need to click on the search box!
- You can press the up and down arrows to scroll through the list.
- You can press the enter key to view a word.
Next I coded an inflectional ending for the "ancient passive infinitive" in -ier. Lucretius is fond of using words like vocārier instead of vocarī (Allen and Greenough, New Latin Grammar, 183.4).
Labels: allen, ancient, cursor, grammar, greenough, infinitive, interface, keyboard, lucretius, passive, shortcuts