6.0253 More Rs: Significant uses of E-Texts (4/133

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Wed, 30 Sep 1992 18:17:23 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 6, No. 0253. Wednesday, 30 Sep 1992.


(1) Date: 24 Sep 1992 10:44:00 -0400 (EDT) (19 lines)
From: Leslie Burkholder <lb0q+%ANDREW.CMU.EDU@CARNEGIE.BITNET>
Subject: Re: 6.0241 Significant use of E-Texts (1/12)

(2) Date: Wed, 23 Sep 92 00:13:07 PDT (16 lines)
From: cbf@athena.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber)
Subject: Re: 6.0249 Rs: Significant Uses of E-Texts (8/264)

(3) Date: Fri, 25 Sep 92 15:52:58 -0400 (28 lines)
From: brassey@HUSC.BITNET
Subject: Re: 6.0249 Rs: Significant Uses of E-Texts (8/264)

(4) Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 12:07:15 (70 lines)
From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz)
Subject: Uses of E-Texts

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 24 Sep 1992 10:44:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: Leslie Burkholder <lb0q+%ANDREW.CMU.EDU@CARNEGIE.BITNET>
Subject: Re: 6.0241 Significant use of E-Texts (1/12)

Excerpts from mail: 23-Sep-92 Re: 6.0241 Significant use .. by => Elaine
Renear@PSUVM
> I would like to second Wendy Plotkin's request for examples of
> significant use of e-texts in research and teaching.
See
Friedman, McClellan, and Shapiro, "Student performance in an electronic
text environment", Machine-Mediated Learning 3 (1989).
MacKinnon, "Mapping the dimensions of a literary corpus", Literary and
Linguitsic Computing 4 (1989).
MacKinnon, "Kierkegaard's presentation of the good", Philosophy &
Computing, 2 (1993).
Needell and Ver Eecke, "Hegel's usage of 'desire'" (Department of
Philosophy, Georgetown University).

Leslie Burkholder
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------24----
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 92 00:13:07 PDT
From: cbf@athena.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber)
Subject: Re: 6.0249 Rs: Significant Uses of E-Texts (8/264)

I am encouraged both by the anecdotes as well as the bibliographical
references. I wonder if the the philosophers are indeed ahead of the
literary scholars in making use of e-texts. I am also impressed with
Avril Henry's use of e-texts (by which I do mean electronic texts of
significant works, text corpora, and everything else in machine-
readable form) in class, and would be greatly interested in more
detailed information on the search for structures. Does the class
use a particular piece of software? Where do the texts used come
from, etc.?

Charles Faulhaber
UC Berkeley
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------34----
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 92 15:52:58 -0400
From: brassey@HUSC.BITNET
Subject: Re: 6.0249 Rs: Significant Uses of E-Texts (8/264)

I use an electronic text of the Hebrew Bible on my Macintosh. The text is one p

produced by CCAT, with a bit-mapped Hebrew font and text conversion
program which were written by Jay Treat. The text appears in Hebrew
characters on the screen, and can be included in any sort of textual
application. In addition to providing an easy and accurate way to enter\ex
excerpts into an otherwise English paper, I use the electronic text
as a way to manipulate poetic lines or other features of the text. I
can produce my own interlinear edition, with Hebrew passage, my own
English translation, and an apparatus of critical notes, all of which
can be expanded, changed, or printed out whenever I please.
Another application of e-texts can be found in the search software
Mac Bible now published by Zondervan. This amounts to an electronic
concordance, but with vastly greater capabilities. Various English
translations are available, as well as Greek and Hebrew modules. I can
search and list a wide variety of textual combinations, and save the
results for word processing or print them out.

The possibilities for creative use of electronic texts is limited only
by their expense, availability, and our own book-bound minds.

Paul D. Brassey
Harvard University (grad student)
brassey@husc4.harvard.edu
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------80----
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 12:07:15
From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz)
Subject: Uses of E-Texts

Charles Faulhaber asks:

> I would like to second Wendy Plotkin's request for examples of
> significant use of e-texts in research and teaching.

Without addressing the issue of significance, I have personally used the
University of Colorado's Siouan Archives e-text versions of the Dorsey
Omaha-Ponca texts. These are available from the University's Center for the
Study of the Native Languages of Plains and Southwest. The Archives files
were mostly prepared in the early 70's in a format that is fairly primitive
by today's standards, but they are quite usable, and machine searching the
files for examples is a major improvement over scanning the original
materials by eye. I am using these texts in preparation of my dissertation,
a grammar of Omaha-Ponca, as well as in various other projects.

I have also personally used a Winnebago dictionary in the Archives (Miner's
Field Lexicon) to machine generate a list of Winnebago word forms sorted by
canonical form. Canonical form of Winnebago word forms is a question of
current interest in some theoretical phonological circles. I used the list
of forms myself to demonstrate to my satisfaction that all Winnebago long
vowels can be traced to syllables that were accented in Proto-Mississippi
Valley Siouan. This shows that Winnebago length per se does not tell
linguists any more about vowel length in Proto-Mississippi Valley Siouan
than does the locus of accent in various other related languages in which
vowel length is not constrative, e.g., Dakota.

The Center's Comparative Siouan Dictionary Project has used a number of
dictionary files in the Archives to compile lists of instrumental roots,
i.e., verb roots used with instrumental prefixes. These lists were collated
to reveal sets of cognate forms. The instrumental roots have been a
neglected area in previous hand searching for cognates.

Using the results of the collation, Wes Jones (University of Mary) of the
CSDP was able to show that a significant number of instrumental roots are
cognate except for an extension - a suffixed or prefixed consonant. These
extensions presumably reflect a layer of derivational morphology that is no
longer productive. This goes a long way toward explaining certain sets of
near cognates that were hitherto either regarded as highly irregular or
merely tantalizing coincidences.

The Center's Lakhota Dictionary Project has used the Buechel Dictionary of
Lakota as a starting point in preparation of what will be a major new
dictionary of Lakhota. On intended improvement is to make sure that all
of the words that occur in Buechel's examples are actually in the new
dictionary. In addition, the material involved is being substantially
revised with the aid of native speakers, and the Center will also make use of
the archived Deloria and Bushotter Dakota texts to provide examples in
context.

In some cases, where a dictionary of a Siouan language is not available, or
the available dictionaries are not very complete, as is the case for
Omaha-Ponca, the ability to search Archives files can in some degree
ameliorate this situation.

Finally, the Archives have provided copies of various e-texts to others,
including individuals studying Winnebago and Crow, and students of
collections of Dakota texts prepared by Ella Deloria and Bushotter & Dorsey.
The details of the projects involved in these cases are not know to me.

----

Note: I am not a spokesman for the University of Colorado or its Center for
the Study of the Native Languages of the Plains and Southwest, but I do
have a mole's perspective on the Center projects mentioned, and I believe I
have summarized them adequately.