Analyzing Word List Data - Revision history

John Carter: /* Identifying Roots */

2012-08-07T00:35:24Z

Identifying Roots

Admin at 22:22, 3 August 2011

2011-08-03T22:22:28Z

Admin at 01:26, 13 July 2011

2011-07-13T01:26:29Z

Admin: /* Computing the Percentage */

2011-07-01T03:53:42Z

Computing the Percentage

Admin: /* The Blair Method */

2011-07-01T03:51:47Z

The Blair Method

John Carter at 04:49, 27 June 2011

2011-06-27T04:49:50Z

Admin at 23:19, 21 June 2011

2011-06-21T23:19:54Z

Admin at 10:02, 1 April 2011

2011-04-01T10:02:50Z

Admin at 09:57, 1 April 2011

2011-04-01T09:57:56Z

Admin: /* Data Entry */

2011-03-23T05:23:27Z

Data Entry

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 #For the first word ‘I’ (first person singular), the form is unambiguously monosyllabic; thus no further analysis is required and these forms can be directly compared.
 #For the words egg and seed, all of the varieties have generally similar forms. This disyllabic form is made up of a shared first weak syllable and two different major syllables following that. In this case, the weak syllable is lost in one case and including it would lead to an artificially lower lexical similarity percentage. It is further noted that the similarities between the form for both egg and seed may indicate that this is some sort of classification particle and should be eliminated from the lexicostatistic comparison; thus only the major syllable is compared.
-#The word forms for warm and sit are similar, with an apparent morphologic vowel particle ad the end of the word, and an unusual form in two of the words ending in a glottal stop.
+#The word forms for warm and sit are similar, with an apparent morphologic vowel particle at the end of the word, and an unusual form in two of the words ending in a glottal stop.
-#Considering the word forms for leaf and root, it is apparent that there is an initial morpheme which possibly means having to do with trees. This morpheme provides supplemental semantic information that is not necessary to the core meaning of the major syllable. Including it in the comparison would lead to an artificially higher lexical similarity percentage. Thus, this morpheme is ignored.
+#Considering the word forms for leaf and root, it is apparent that there is an initial morpheme having a meaning relating to 'tree'. This morpheme provides supplemental semantic information that is not necessary to the core meaning of the major syllable. Including it in the comparison would lead to an artificially higher lexical similarity percentage. Thus, this morpheme is ignored.
 Applying these basic steps, the data can be reduced to the roots by eliminating weak and supplemental syllables resulting in the following data:

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 '''Introduction'''
-As we said in the introduction to these procedures, the most common reason to use word lists is to distinguish one variety from another and to decide when one variety is unintelligible to speakers of another. To do this, we analyse how similar one word list is to another and produce a lexical similarity percentage. We have to decide on a principle of comparison detailing the criteria we use to decide whether words are similar or not. This section will detail procedures you can carry out to achieve this.
+As we said in [[Word Lists|the introduction to these procedures]], the most common reason to use word lists is to distinguish one variety from another and to decide when one variety is unintelligible to speakers of another. To do this, we analyse how similar one word list is to another and produce a lexical similarity percentage. We have to decide on a principle of comparison detailing the criteria we use to decide whether words are similar or not. This section will detail procedures you can carry out to achieve this.
 For further refence as you read these procedures, you can refer to the [[Field Guide Glossary]].

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 ==References==
 <references />
-[[Category:Methodology]]
+[[Category:Word_Lists]]

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 ===Computing the Percentage===
-Whatever method is used to determine lexical similarity for word pairs, the method of computing the percentage is simple. Just divide the number of lexically similar items by the number of items you are comparing. In the example from the previous section, this would be 2 ÷ 3 = 0.667 = 67%. Of course, you would never do this with only three words, but you get the idea. Suppose instead that you had compared 98 pairs of words and found that 74 of them were lexically similar. Then your lexical similarity percentage would be 74 ÷ 98 = 0.755 = 76%.
+Whatever method is used to determine lexical similarity for word pairs, the method of computing the percentage is simple. Just divide the number of lexically similar items by the number of items you are comparing. In the example from the end of the [[Blair method]] page, this would be 2 ÷ 3 = 0.667 = 67%. Of course, you would never do this with only three words, but you get the idea. Suppose instead that you had compared 98 pairs of words and found that 74 of them were lexically similar. Then your lexical similarity percentage would be 74 ÷ 98 = 0.755 = 76%.
 The Blair Method is applied to language varieties pairwise. That is, if you have 10 varieties you are comparing, you have to apply the method to each of the 45 unique pairs. Sometimes it is faster to do some of the steps for many varieties at once. Suppose again that you are comparing 10 varieties. For each item in the list, place each of the 10 words in a “correspondence set” (or “similarity set”). When items are clearly lexically similar (e.g. there are 5 phones and 4 of them are identical) or clearly not similar, there is no point in taking very much time writing which categories and sub-categories each segment are in. Just mark all the words that are clearly lexically similar with the letter “a”, indicating that they are in the same set. If there is more than one distinct set of similar words, use more letters to distinguish each set. Later, you can go back and figure out the categories for the remaining, less clear, words, and put them in the right sets. Doing this in [[WordSurv]] or Excel can speed the process of computing the lexical similarity percentages for all the possible pairs of varieties. [[WordSurv]] does it automatically, and Excel can be programmed to do so. Once you have computed the percentages for each pair of varieties, you can organize them in a matrix, such as Table 4.

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 ===The Blair Method===
-A method which takes the middle ground between the Comparative Method and simple inspection has been developed in South Asia. It's based on the method outlined in Frank Blair's 1990 book ''Survey on a Shoestring''<ref name="blair" /> and is thus called the [[Blair Method]].
+A method which takes the middle ground between the [[Comparative Method]] and simple inspection has been developed in South Asia. It's based on the method outlined in Frank Blair's 1990 book ''Survey on a Shoestring''<ref name="blair" /> and is thus called the ''Blair Method''.
-The basis of this method is the ''segment''. A segment is a phoneme unit e.g. an initial phoneme. The corresponding segments in a pair of words are analysed and placed in the following categories.
+See the [[Blair Method]] page for detailed guidance on how comparisons are made between varieties.
 ===Levenshtein Distance Method===

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 ==Data Entry==
-Type the transcriptions into a spreadsheet program such as Excel, or directly into [[WordSurv]]. If you use a spreadsheet program though, you will probably be more able to export the data into other tools that may make analysis easier, such as [[Phonology Assistant]].
+Type the transcriptions into a spreadsheet program such as Excel, or directly into [[WordSurv]]. If you use a spreadsheet program though, you will probably be more able to export the data into other tools that may make analysis easier, such as [[Phonology Assistant]]. For detailed instructions about inputting word lists into WordSurv 6.0.2, see [[Inputting Data into WordSurv]].
 Make sure to use [[Unicode]] fonts for your [[IPA]] characters. If you don't, they may not display correctly on other computers. For instructions on entering IPA Unicode text, see our [[Typing IPA]] page.

← Older revision		Revision as of 23:19, 21 June 2011
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	==References==		==References==
	<references />		<references />
		+	[[Category:Methodology]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 09:57, 1 April 2011
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	Thus, based on Table 3, two of the three pairs are considered lexically similar.		Thus, based on Table 3, two of the three pairs are considered lexically similar.
		+
		+	===Levenshtein Distance Method===
		+	See our [[Levenshtein Distance]] page for more info about this method.

	===Computing the Percentage===		===Computing the Percentage===