<!>Basic Vocabulary for Philologists (2014-10-13 17:43:31)
Basic Vocabulary for Philologists
Anthologica Universe Atlas / Forums / Terra Firma / Basic Vocabulary for Philologists / <!>Basic Vocabulary for Philologists (2014-10-13 17:43:31)

? dhok posts: 235
, Alkali Metal, Norman, United States
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quoting Morrígan, Countess:
Cool; no idea what is the appropriate thing to do in that case; just go with the first element? That seems to be insufficiently a principled decision.

For nōn, that's probably the best choice, since nōn syntactically and semantically patterns with Sanskrit na, OCS ne, OIrish and the like, and not with words meaning "one". I agree, though, that this seems a very touch-and-go rule that won't apply to everything. (We could just decide to live with this...semantics are fuzzy, after all.)

If we're using a master list of roots to construct this, maybe it's better to break each word down into its constituent parts and turn such words into disambiguation pages of a sort? I know travisb recommended using a real database, not ad-libbing a spreadsheet. I don't know how to do databases, but I can certainly try to learn.