From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 745
Date: 2000-01-02
----- Original Message -----From: Derrick ChapmanSent: Saturday, January 01, 2000 11:52 PMSubject: [cybalist] Re: PIE Online DatabaseAny thoughts on the data elements (fields) for the database?1) PIE word2) Pronunciation3) Meaning(s) and usage4) Source (credit for reconstruction)5) Brief explanation of its reconstruction6) Indo-European cognate offspring
(1) and (2) are not separable, as the PIE reconstruction is supposed to be phonetically based. A brief explanation would be useful in some troublesome cases (e.g. involving complex consonant clusters, metathesis etc.). This could easily be placed under (5), so in my opinion (2) is entirely superfluous.A bare database is not enough. In order to avoid utter confusion we need (from the very start) some kind of standardised transcription and a separate page to lay it out (some explicit transliteration conventions will also be necessary to deal with the orthography of cognates quoted under (6)).A short guide to PIE root structure, ablaut and word morphology would be very useful, plus a few simple tables to illustrate the most common declension and conjugation patterns -- but this can wait a while.Piotr