#zylphia

OCtober Day 3: Old

This seemed interesting, so I searched:

2: noun

3: noun

3: noun

6: noun

8: noun

10: noun

10: noun

12: noun:

12: noun

The results were somewhat disappointing to me. None of them were like the first result, which gave me a definition of "noun" based on an apparent sense that "noun" itself had an essential definition.

I found it kind of strange (if not especially strange, but kind of) that the first thing I found in an ordinary search was a dictionary definition. Do all dictionaries just give you one giant definition for "noun"? Why not use a giant definition of "verb"?

I tried a few of the other dictionaries in the suggested search list (Webster's Third Collegiate, Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors) and they mostly did the same thing. It's an incredible list of dictionary-like definitions. Not only does the search give you every dictionary definition for "adjacent." If you add "adj" it returns every adjective definition ("Adj has a lot of synonyms."). There is a function that takes the string "or" and lists every definition of that string, for instance.

It occurs to me that if I had gone with the original tack of doing an example sentence search ("What does the word 'noun' mean to you?"), I think the first (and only) result I might have gotten would have been the following:

A quiescent insect pupa, especially of a butterfly or moth. noun

"noun" is listed as a word with a definition that involves defining "noun" as a word that is a type of "Insect pupa".

I tried a few other example sentences of the type "noun {predicate}", and while the dictionaries (except Webster's Third Collegiate, which decided to present me with definitions of all the words "noun" was defined as in the sentence) were syntactically correct, they all presented me with either one of the standard entries, or with that one giant definition.

(The first non-standard dictionary result the program gave me for "noun" was the phrase "quiescent insect pupa" — which in my opinion looked strange.)

In sum, this is pretty cool and I will definitely go back and use it some more, but the program kind of gave me the feeling of walking in on someone else reading out loud. The definitions all seem to be based on a sort of monologue someone might take about their word dictionary. At least the ones I've seen seem consistent with that framing.

In particular, I found the entry for "verb" really odd:

a word having a modifying or qualifying effect, as a verb is a word that

acts, helps, or affects.

(Yeah, okay, I will grant that that's clearly in some way a definition of "verb".)

That description made me think of a few of the results I'd gotten for "verb":

3: noun

4: noun

7: noun

9: noun

12: noun

These all gave me noun definitions. Again, the same thing I saw for "noun" above.

Finally, I looked up "adjective" in the program. This turned out to be even weirder.

'adjective' is a word that modifies (others or anything else) or describes

(others or anything else)) something.

(Uh huh!)

The results for "verb" and "adjective" were more mixed:

4: noun

7: noun

9: noun

12: noun:

13: adj

15: adj.

To summarize, the results for "verb" seemed to be mostly either nouns, or a long, continuous definition of "verb" (which looked like a noun to me), or a mixed bag.

The entries for "adjective" turned out to be mostly either nouns, or a mix of nouns and ("adj").

This is my favorite program so far. It is very helpful and its definitions are really funny.

In particular, this seems like exactly the kind of program that would make it easy to see into the mind of a non-lexicographer (to use some academic cliche). For instance I went through the phrase "verb is a word that …. When I see that, my mind fills in a list of cases, and then a list of English verb tenses, and then thinks in various terms of experience I can only experience through immersion in English-speaking cultures, like "I knew that word already" and "that word is a lot more familiar to me by now." At least, that is how it tends to work in non-dictionary programs, which tend to list one or a few "standard" definitions that happen to be closest to my own associations.

After reading the "adjective" definition, I knew that "noun" and "verb" were the most common word types in English, but now I know some statistics about them. (Admittedly, these statistics only apply to the program, and don't have anything to do with English per se; they're just funny facts I now know.)

"word type":

2: noun

3: verb

3: adjective

4: particle (like "this" or "here")

5: numeral

6: other (such as acronyms or abbreviations)

7: other (gonna try this again) (this was the original one)

9: (gonna try this again) (this was the originally one)

11: (this was the originally one)

13: (this was the originally one)

14: (this was the originally one)

15: (this was the originally one)

17: (this was the originally one)

26: (this was the originally one)

28: (this was the originally one)

29: (this was the originally one)

30: (this was the originally one)

31: (this was the originally one)

32: (this was the originally one)

33: (this was the originally one)

Ga1ahad and Scientific Witchery