WikiDiscuss

WikiDiscuss


Re: BPFK To-Do

posts: 162

Robin:
>I think you miss my point. I care little about the definition of
>xagri, but the key-word 'reed' is simply wrong. It's not craziness,
>and I'm not picking nits; lo xagri is *not* a reed, of any kind, in
>any sense.

Actually it is. Musicians call "reed instruments" "reeds" for short.

I have to remind people that the gismu keywords were NEVER intended to be definitional. They were intended to be something brief and distinctive to be typed into LogFlash, with preference given to the English word used to generate the gismu, if that is distinctive enough.

It was always intended that the full definition be used. This is in part because at best the keyword makes no note of place structures and thus is generally a "definition" for the x1 place. No gismu (or brivla) should EVER be considered "defined" unless the definition includes the place structure.

Unfortunately, after all this high-minded intention, it was decided to baseline the gismu list, with the keywords being part of the baseline and hence part of the language definition. This was back in 1992, and LogFlash is not necessarily the primary means by which people study the gismu anymore. Thus the primary purpose of the keywords is forgotten.

Colin Fine, later reviewed by Nora, came up with keywords for all the non-x1 places of the gismu. I think this file is called oblique.txt or something like that on the dictionary work files.

If the keywords are intended to be a short definition, then probably ALL of the gismu keywords including the oblique ones need to be reexamined for the purpose of consistently serving to briefly define the gismu, and all oblique keywords should be included in the definition and not just the x1 keyword.

In short, as a "to-do" item, this stands to open up more problems than it would solve.