OmegaWiki alternative structure

Introduction

The basic dictionary division is the entry. The entries of UW are the forms of tokens in some language.

Form

A form is the most difficult thing to define exactly. By form we understand what the general public refers to by word or phrase.

Examples of forms

• form
• :
• kick the bucket
• forms
• formed
• forming
• kicked the bucket
• ...

Lemma

Also called a headword.

A representant of a group of morphologically related forms.

Examples

• form (noun)
• form (verb)

Principles

Representation

Each form has a representation:

• the sequence of phonemes (1)
• the sequence of graphemes (1)
• the sequence of phones (2)
• the sequence of graphs (2)

(1) these have a temporal and regional information associated with them. So for instance the color/colour pair is assumed to be a pair of grapheme sequences with the former being American, the latter British.

(2) These are the possible realizations of the ones marked by (1) for example [p] and [b] can be both variants of the same phoneme in languages not distinguishing voiced and unvoiced consonants (as is conjectured for the language of Linear A inscriptions)

(2) These also carry their environmental information, affecting their selection based on the sandhi rules.

Lemma

Each form has a link to its lemma.

Category

Each form has associated a set of categories with it.

Examples

• dixit (Latin for: (he/she/it) said)
  • part_of_speech:verb
  • number:singular
  • tense:perfect
  • person:third
  • mood:indicative
  • voice:active

• dixi (Latin for: (I) said)
  • part_of_speech:verb
  • number:singular
  • tense:perfect
  • person:first
  • mood:indicative
  • voice:active

• regis (Latin: of king)
  • part_of_speech:noun
  • number:singular
  • case:genitive
  • gender:masculine