Re: [ontolog-forum] One new English word every 98 minutes

[carl mattocks <carlmattocks@xxxxxxxxx>]

Yes it strengthens the case for controlled vocabularies which are used to explain the meaning of the new word

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 2:59 PM, Simon Reinhardt <simon.reinhardt@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Adrian Walker wrote:

Hi All --

Here's some food for thought.

According to the Global Language Monitor ( http://www.languagemonitor.com/no-of-words ), there's a new English word with significant usage every 98 minutes.

So, does this strengthen the case for controlled vocabularies, or indicate that the task of controlling the English language is hopeless?

Something related I watched on TED last night: http://www.ted.com/talks/erin_mckean_redefines_the_dictionary.html

While she doesn't really say much except repeat that current dictionaries suck over and over again (I had wished for some more perspectives and ideas) she does have a point: The way we organise vocabularies has to change drastically and the Internet community can help collecting the data. We just need a good infrastructure (definitely not Wiktionary [1]; OmegaWiki [2] is more like it) and, as she says, it needs to be done more scientifically (GOLD is a good starting point [3]).

WordNet was a nice idea - relating words, providing links for discovery and serendipity. But if you can build something like that which is complex enough to be useful but easy enough to involve the Internet community then, no, I don't think it's hopeless. :-)
Disclaimer: my thesis goes a bit into that direction, but it mainly focussed on creating a community to describe and link pronunciations and other forms of words, not so much on all the linguistic detail that dictionaries cover.

Regards,
 Simon

[1] http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Main_Page
[2] http://www.omegawiki.org/Meta:Main_Page
[3] http://linguistics-ontology.org/

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