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Word roots / meaning - visualising | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| zenmonkey Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6486 days ago 803 posts - 1119 votes  1 sounds Speaks: EnglishC2*, Spanish*, French, German Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew | Message 9 of 23 20 October 2009 at 9:20am | IP Logged | ||
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"hyperlinking to the verbal particles" - I now need to think about that further, I have a solution but I'm not too happy about it. It is possible to just create a group having a common prefix morpheme and then a link for the group page with the words in that group. The issue I have with my current design is that it's the group that is being linked not the root in the word and requires an active 'human' decision to do this. I'm not sure it makes sense without seeing mock-ups. More to follow...
I think I have now come up with my database structure that allows for this and I am building some initial mock-ups (automatic generation of the pages from the database) but still a lot of work before I start sharing. Edited by zenmonkey on 20 October 2009 at 9:23am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5901 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 23 20 October 2009 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was thinking about your project and tried working with the root verb ziehen and considering each affix and how it relates to the verb. For instance, -ab, -an, -aus, -ein, -zu, -ent, and others are easy to group together as they all refer to a pulling on or off or other motion.
But, how would you represent a reflexive form such as sich verziehen also denoting a kind of movement, i.e., clearing away, but with the additional pronoun? Would you give links to inflected/conjugated word forms, for example, the past participle of verzeihen, and show the difference when two forms look identical: verzeihen/verzieh/verziehen or verziehen/verzog/verzogen In normal usage you'd need to know the context in which the word appears. How would this appear of a graph? I hope this makes sense. I like your idea a lot and it sounds like you know what you are doing. I don't have the technological knowledge to construct the kind of site you propose, but I would certainly like to use it. I tried doing something of the same idea on spreadsheets but it was very boring. I also found these sites but don't know if they would be helpful to you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordNet http://www.globalwordnet.org These appear to be for academic linguists, but a site for the everyday non-professional language learner would be very useful. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5901 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 23 20 October 2009 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just found another one: this site is linked to the WordNet Wikipedia entry and it uses material from the WordNet database to show visual relationships among numerous English words.
www.snappywords.com Well there goes my day. I must go play with this now! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| zenmonkey Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6486 days ago 803 posts - 1119 votes 1 sounds Speaks: EnglishC2*, Spanish*, French, German Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew | Message 12 of 23 20 October 2009 at 11:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good input!
I looked at Wordnet and the synsets hoping I could be just a lazy user but that is a very interesting tool but not what I am looking into. It's really a collection of synonyms for semantic parsing. In other words, what set of words can I use that would not change the meaning of a phrase or the semantics structure. and it's in only English. The Wordnet projects follow in a similar vein and focus on
So it's really a computer-assisted relational and hierarchal thesaurus. And while interesting, does not work for me in the area of language learning and word derivational morphology. How words are built from roots (for example read-->'readable' but not 'cryable') and derive meaning from suffixes -- I'm certain my Chinese learning could also be boosted by that (It's basically what Mathews book teaches too). Oooooooh! snappywords is a lot of fun! But again, not really what I want, has a nice flash interface but misses out on the linguistic/learning part of words, although I imagine it would be great if someone wanted to learn English. :) Thanks, I just spend a good hour playing with it! But again thanks, it gives me an idea or two about passing parameters and explaining this in the future. And I found this word to be a lot of fun "water":  Edited by zenmonkey on 20 October 2009 at 11:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zenmonkey Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6486 days ago 803 posts - 1119 votes 1 sounds Speaks: EnglishC2*, Spanish*, French, German Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew | Message 13 of 23 17 November 2009 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | ||
Here is another example of this type of representation. This time for Portuguese/Spanish Cognates and how to learn them...
 Edited by zenmonkey on 17 November 2009 at 8:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| RudyPiper Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5392 days ago 7 posts - 12 votes Speaks: EnglishB2 | Message 14 of 23 18 December 2009 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello Everyone.
This is my first reply on here, and hopefully it won't be the last. This is a very interesting topic. From my humble experience, I believe it will work with Germanic languages perfectly. The Swedish language is similar in structur to German, and Swedes have devised the concept you are talking about here, though slightly differently. There are books that explain the affixes meanings (rather than the actual morpheme, which you are talking about here) and its effect on words. It works like magic, most of the time, that i rarely reffered to dictionaries (unless exact redention was required). I do not know if it'll work with Romantic languages (which I studied, but not gone too deep into), and I am not sure if it will work with English (because I am not sure wether to calssify English as Latin or Germanic language). Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JanKG Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5701 days ago 245 posts - 280 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Italian, Finnish | Message 15 of 23 27 December 2009 at 10:26am | IP Logged | ||
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This is funny and very challenging. I have been teaching Dutch to adults at the European Union (Commision) in Brussels and that got me into quite the same idea. However listing those different derivations is somehow fun, but I have not been able to literally and figuratively sell the idea because it is not didactic enough.
trong>I first wrote this (...): "To me, IMHO, the key issue was/ is reducing the number of words to be learnt or remembered by showing how they are 'built', construed, using prefixes, suffixes, sometimes even pointing out the etymology. I have listed words containing what I call key words (in Dutch trong>nemen (take), meten (measure), zin (sense, direction, meaning, ...), and have then explained them in texts using a limited vocabulary, also referrring to E/F/G translations and to Latin and Greek roots. In the meantime, I have also also developed 'light' versions based on the 'encyclopedic' versions, which appear to be interesting to native speakers even (just think of links between trong>beWusT (conSCIous), WETENschap (SCIence), WEETgiering (eager to know) , which all contain 'weten' (the same word as in 'witty'. But it is still only interesting, and I have considered adding words that are 'near-synonyms', and linking them into series based on certain processes (decision-making for example). Someone referring to the Cambridge book "Using English Vocabulary". " I'd wish to know how the visual representation of derivations or of synonyms can contribute (I had developed my own schemes, but I wonder whether they are useful enough). It can be great food for thought, for sure, but for language learners? I wonder. trong>But now... I discovered wordnet at Wikipedia, as someone suggested earlier, and that is great. I wonder whether the structure is the ideal one (as some meanings are only figuratively use, or metaphorically), but this is something that I had been looking for. trong> Yet, the other question remains: how can we make this didactically useful? Please convince me ! ;-) Edited by JanKG on 27 December 2009 at 10:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JanKG Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5701 days ago 245 posts - 280 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Italian, Finnish | Message 16 of 23 27 December 2009 at 10:43am | IP Logged | ||
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As for the "hyperlinking to the verbal particles". That is certainly an important idea: if people understand how these prefixes (or particles in English) work they can understand the meaning themselves, I think. Would it not be most useful to list the affix combinations in your representation (ver-, be, auf, ... + ziehen) and then make a hyperlink to the affix meaning list? (I am not that good at computer terms, but...).
It should work for English, for German and Dutch, for north Germanic languages, it seems to me, but I think it is no good for Romanic languages, because the system is no longer productive. Though knowing that 'dé-' is 'ent-' (G), or 'ont' (D) - 'off' in E - helps the learner a lot, I think. I think cross-linguistic reference might help very much. Edited by JanKG on 27 December 2009 at 10:50am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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