114 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2024
    1. The most prolific Reader in Europe – we might call him a ‘super-contributor’ – was Hartwig Helwich, a professor at the University of Viennawho wrote out the entire Cursor Mundi onto 46,599 slips. His efforts madethe medieval poem the second-most-frequently cited work in the Dictionaryafter the Bible (though in the current OED, it has dropped to eleventh in thetop sources).

      This practice of writing out everything onto slips sounds like that used later (double check the timing) by the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in creating their slip corpus for later work.

    2. It was a treasure trove.

      Curious that she doesn't use "thesaurus" here!!

    3. He devised a systemof storage for all the slips in shelves of pigeonholes that lined the walls of theScriptorium.

      The scriptorium for the OED relied on shelves of pigeonholes into which the slips could be sorted and stored.

      There are photos of Murray with these pigeonholes stuffed behind him. Dig one of these up.

      This pigeonhole practice is in marked difference to other projects like the TLL which relied on boxes on shelves.

  2. Jan 2024
  3. Oct 2023
  4. Aug 2023
    1. His most well-known work was the Thesaurus graecae linguae, which was printed in five volumes. The basis of Greek lexicology, no thesaurus would rival that of Estienne's for three hundred years.
    1. The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) is a research center at the University of California, Irvine. The TLG was founded in 1972 by Marianne McDonald (a graduate student at the time and now a professor of theater and classics at the University of California, San Diego) with the goal to create a comprehensive digital collection of all surviving texts written in Greek from antiquity to the present era.
  5. Jul 2023
    1. histories of three attempts to generate a comprehensive lexicon of Latinity.

      https://www.history.msstate.edu/directory/cf1258

      Christian Flow has studied three attempts to create a comprehensive lexicon of Latinity.

      The TLL would be one, what did the other two look like? When were they?

    1. Quinn, Annalisa. “Latin Dictionary’s Journey: A to Zythum in 125 Years (and Counting).” The New York Times, November 30, 2019, sec. Arts. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/30/arts/latin-dictionary.html.

    2. Originally a German state undertaking, the project became international after the Second World War. Its 1.25 million euro annual budget still mostly comes from German taxpayers, but international partners, including the United States, send researchers to Munich.

      The TLL was originally funded by the German state, but became an internationally funded project following World War II. In 2019 it had a 1.25 million euro budget primarily supported by German taxpayers as well as several other international partners and underwriters.

    3. Marijke Ottink working in the archive. “You have to know about all kinds of texts: Roman law and medicine and poetry and prose and history,” she said.Credit...Gordon Welters for The New York Times

      Encompasing photo inside the research room showing 7 large floor to ceiling rows of shelving containing a portion of 10 million slips in boxes

    4. Visiting researchers often come to look into particular words — the guest book outside the library contains, in faint letters, the name Joseph Ratzinger, better known as Pope Benedict XVI. He came to consult the boxes for “populus,” which means “masses” or “people.”

      The name Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) appears in the guestbook of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae when he came to consult the dictionary projects research on the word "populus" (masses, people).

    5. “Its scale is prodigious,” David Butterfield, a senior lecturer in Classics at Cambridge, said in an email, adding that when the first publication appeared in 1900, “it did not go unnoticed that the word closing that installment was ‘absurdus.’”
    6. they are up to the letter R.

      By late 2019, the TLL was up to the letter 'R'.

    1. https://tllpod.podbean.com/e/oscvlvm-panciera/

      There were three types of named kisses in Roman culture generally: one for family, one for wives, and one for mistresses. (see basium, savium)

      One Emperor outlawed daily kissing (greetings) likely because of a facial disease for which kissing would have increased the spread.

      -culum is a Latin diminutive ending, thus os (mouth) + culum (little) = small mouth or kiss

      see also: //publikationen.badw.de/de/thesaurus/lemmata#63769

  6. Jun 2023
    1. There are many different types of controlled vocabularies, the most common among them are: Thesaurus - a type of controlled vocabulary used in information systems that organizes concepts in hierarchical and/or associative relationships and provides their semantic definitions Classification schema - a system that based primarily on classifying things or concepts into groups or classes with a detailed explanation of those classification methods Subject heading list - a list of terms describing subjects in information system Taxonomy - a system that organizes things and concepts in groups based on their common characteristics and/or differences Terminology - a list of terms used to describe concepts in a certain domain Glossary - an alphabetical list of terms with their explanation used in a specific context
  7. May 2023
  8. Mar 2023
    1. It is based in Munich, in elegant accommodation within the Bavarian Academy (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften), which is housed in the Residenz (left), formerly the palace of the Bavarian royal family.

      The massive zettelkasten which powers the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae is befittingly housed on the top floors of the Residenz, the former palace of the Bavarian royal family, now a part of the Bavarian Academy (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften) in Munich, Germany.

    2. Thesaurus Linguae Latinae - Society for Classical Studies

      basic details, particularly administrative ones about the structure of the editors, fellows, et al and funding for attending

    3. Zettel, right

      slip for the word sentio

    1. Pinkerton, Byrd. “The Ultimate Latin Dictionary: After 122 Years, Still At Work On The Letter ‘N.’” NPR, May 14, 2016, sec. Parallels. https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/05/14/476873307/the-ultimate-latin-dictionary-after-122-years-still-at-work-on-the-letter-n.

    2. A sample of the note cards the scholars are using to assemble the comprehensive Latin dictionary. Courtesy of Samuel Beckelhymer. hide caption toggle caption Courtesy of Samuel Beckelhymer.

    3. The archive contains boxes filled with notes on each Latin word. In most cases, the scholars made the notes more than a century ago. Courtesy of Nigel Holmes hide caption toggle caption Courtesy of Nigel Holmes

    4. Stefano Rocchi, a researcher on the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, the comprehensive Latin dictionary that has been in the works since 1894 in Germany. Researchers are currently working on the letters N and R. They don't expect to finish until around 2050. BAdW/Foto Janina Amendt hide caption toggle caption BAdW/Foto Janina Amendt

    5. They both talk, though, about going over material again and again. The process of writing an article involves putting words in chronological order, but also creating branching, sub-dividing trees of syntax and semantics.

      Interesting to see a reference the branching nature of the meanings of an individual word which has multiple ways of being categorized.

      The TLL categorizes words alphabetically first and then by chronologically second. The rest of the structure shakes out from there as editors write articles for each of the words.

    6. "No one volunteers for res," she says, a little ruefully.
    1. Kathleen Coleman, “The Thesaurus Linguae Latinae” Paideia Lectures 2022, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s98hTIOW1Ug.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s98hTIOW1Ug

    2. The TLL was moved to a monastery in Bavaria during WWII because they were worried that the building that contained the zettelkasten would be bombed and it actually was.

      The slips have been microfilmed and a copy of them is on store at Princeton as a back up just i case.

      [01:17:00]

    3. Roberta Stewart of Dartmouth has written a description (available on the website) of how an article for the TLL is generally written. [01:10:26]

    4. Remember the Thesaurus is a work of the human brain and therefore it is fallible. —Kathleen M. Coleman

      replace Thesaurus with zettelkasten...

    5. Following volumes I and II (a and b) the editors of the TLL separated out the occurrence of proper names into a supplement, called the Onomasticon, which includes the words beginning with "C" and "D". Following D, they began leaving out proper names because their inclusion was slowing down the progress of the thesaurus and there are other resources like encyclopedias for discussion and inclusion of these. [24:48]

    6. For rare words in Latin, articles may include all surviving attestations of those words. Typically only a representative selection of attestations are included in most articles which is indicated in the text by two "crossed cigars" before the lemma (or headword).

      Within the TLL's work they consider the work on each headword to be an "article" which are also individually credited.

    7. The TLL contains every instance of every know Latin word in every known medium from the beginning of the language down to the 2nd century CE and from then on, every lexicographically significant instance from that time until the 6th century CE. [22:32]

    8. Basic statistics regarding the TLL: - ancient Latin vocabulary words: ca. 55,000 words - 10,000,000 slips - ca. 6,500 boxes - ca. 1,500 slips per box - library 32,000 volumes - contributors: 375 scholars from 20 different countries - 12 Indo-European specalists - 8 Romance specialists - 100 proof-readers - ca. 44,000 words published - published content: 70% of the entire vocabulary - print run: 1,350 - Publisher: consortium of 35 academies from 27 countries on 5 continents

      Longest remaining words: - non / 37 boxes of ca 55,500 slips - qui, quae, quod / 65 boxes of ca. 96,000 slips - sum, esse, fui / 54.5 boxes of ca. 81,750 slips - ut / 35 boxes of ca 52,500 slips

      Note that some of these words have individual zettelkasten for themselves approaching the size of some of the largest personal collections we know about!

      [18:51]

    9. It took approximately five years of collecting and excerpting material before the researchers of the TLL began writing articles.

    10. The Thesaurus Linguae Latinae didn't excerpt every single word in written Latin, just what they thought was lexicographically significant. As an example, they didn't excerpt all of Augustine for had they, the collection would have been approximately 50% larger because he was such a prolific writer. [t=891]

    11. San/sand (? what is the correct word?) box invented with a hinge which moves forward allowing one to more easily thumb through the slips in their box.

    12. The Thesaurus Linguae Latinae used the Meusel system for creating Zettel by utilizing double folio sheets onto which they copied text in hectographic ink which can be reproduced by lithography before cutting them up into slips.

      Done alphabetically and then secondarily by chronological time. (Indicated in a box on the top left of each slip.) The number of copies of each slip is written in the bottom left hand corner and circled.

    1. one can protect by using dictionaries of synonyms and then create enough referencesheets (e.g. Astronomy: cf. Science of the Stars). The only premise for this is that one knowsbeforehand the one location where the sheet belongs in the box.

      use of theausaurus to limit subject headings...

    1. The ability to intentionally and strategically allocateour attention is a competitive advantage in a distracted world. Wehave to jealously guard it like a valuable treasure.

      It would seem that the word treasure here is being used to modify one's attention. Historically in books about "knowledge work" or commonplacing, the word was used with respect to one's storehouse of knowledge itself and not one's attention. Some of the effect is the result of the break in historical tradition being passed down from one generation to another. It's also an indication that the shift in value has moved not from what one knows or has, but that the attention itself is more valued now, even in a book about excerpting, thinking, and keeping knowledge!

      Oh how far we have fallen!

      It's also an indication of the extremes of information overload we're facing that the treasure is attention and not the small tidbits of knowledge and understanding we're able to glean from the massive volumes we face on a daily basis.

    1. Or, we canpicture ourselves collecting bones, breaking and roastingthem, and then boiling them for hours or days in a stockpot to release the nutritious and tasty marrow.

      We can imagine mining the information we encounter, following veins and seams underground, then smelting and refining the ore into useful metals. Occasionally we might come across gems that are nearly perfect when we discover them, perhaps needing only a bit of cutting and setting to reveal their beauty. But mostly the work involves patience and effort, as we go through the steps of finding, collecting, refining, and concentrating information from a raw material into exactly what we need for our structure

      I love these two new clever metaphors (mining and refining and cooking) for note taking for building knowledge. They're a welcome addition to the older and more classical metaphor of bees (Latin: apes) collecting pollen to make honey in the commonplace tradition.

    1. Based on the history and usage of horreum here in this first episode of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae podcast, a project featuring a 10+ million slip zettelkasten at its core, I can't help but think that not only is the word ever so apropos for an introduction, but it does quite make an excellent word for translating the idea of card index in English or Zettelkasten from German into Latin.

      My horreum is a storehouse for my thoughts and ideas which nourishes my desire to discover and build upon my knowledge.

      This seems to be just the sort of thing that Jeremy Cherfas might appreciate on multiple levels.

      https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/download/nxm28u/Horreum.mp3

    1. In looking at the uses of and similarities between Wb and TLL, I can't help but think that these two zettelkasten represented the state of the art for Large Language Models and some of the ideas behind ChatGPT

    2. Dem Konzept nach ist dies ein key word in context (KWIC) Index, ein Typus von Indices, wie sie heute immer noch als Grundoperation der Textdatenverarbeitung erzeugt werden.

      The method used for indexing the Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache and the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae is now generally known as a key word in context (KWIC) index.

    3. Textmaterials war zunächst ein technisches Problem. Angelehnt an die Praxis des Thesaurus Linguae Latinae wurde ein ausgeklügeltes Verzettelungssystem entworfen. Die gesammelten Texte wurden dazu in Passagen von jeweils etwa 30 Wörtern Länge unterteilt und in hieroglyphischer Form auf Zettel im Postkartenformat geschrieben. Die Bezeichnung des verzettelten Texts und der aktuellen Textpassage wurden in der Kopfzeile notiert. Wo erforderlich, sind auch Notizen zum szenischen Kontext einer Inschrift beigefügt, und meistens wurde der Versuch gemacht, eine Übersetzung der Textpassage zu geben. Gerade die Lückenhaftigkeit dieser Übersetzungen zeigt deutlich, wie unsicher man sich damals noch an vielen Stellen sein mußte. Die gesamte primäre Textaufnahme hatte bis zu einem gewissen Grade vorläufigen Charakter und war nicht als abschließende Analyse der Textstelle, sondern als Ausgangspunkt eines vertiefenden, vergleichenden Studiums gedacht. Dass heute viele der damals problematischen Passagen keine Schwierigkeiten mehr machen, ist zuallererst ein Verdienst des Wörterbuches und belegt, wie dieses das philologische Textverständnis auf ein neues Niveau gehoben hat.

      The structure of the filing system for the Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache was designed based on the work done for the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae started in 1894. Texts in the collection were roughly divided into passages of about 30 words and written in hieroglyphic form on postcard-sized slips of paper. The heading contained the designation of the text and the body included the texts' context (inscriptions, etc.) as well as a preliminary translation of the passage.

      These passages were then cross-referenced with other occurrences of the hieroglyphics to provide better progressive translations which ultimately appeared in the final manuscript. As a result some of the translations on the cards were incomplete as work proceeded and cross-comparisons of individual words were puzzled out.

      A slip showing a passage of text from the victory stele of Sesostris III at the Nubian fortress of Semna. The handwriting is that of project leader Adolf Erman, who had "already struggled with the text as a high school student".

  9. Jan 2023
  10. Aug 2022
  11. Jun 2022
  12. May 2022
    1. I’ve had my fair share of challenges, but at eachstage of my journey, treating my thoughts as treasures worthkeeping has been the pivotal element in everything I’ve overcomeand achieved.

      He uses the phrase "thoughts as treasures", but I'm reasonably sure that he doesn't do so with the same intention as the centuries of rhetoricians which preceded him.

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  13. Mar 2022
  14. Jan 2022
    1. As memory models, rhetorical storehouses and archives are functional equivalents. Both are used as devices for storing and retriev-ing knowledge.

      Mnemonic (mental) storehouses (thesaurus) and written archives are functionally equivalent and serve to store and retrieve information. Their primary difference is in the effort put into how one applies their attention to them. The former requires more mental effort into storing information into the location and then recalling it.

      In the case of archives with subject indices, they require less mental effort and visually serve a potential store of variety and ease of creating additional links between bits of knowledge.

  15. Jun 2021
    1. At best, thesauruses are mere rest stops in the search for the mot juste. Your destination is the dic-tionary.

      an apt definition of a thesaurus

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  16. Sep 2020
  17. Feb 2017
    1. Interface de consultation du thésaurus de l'Unesco à partir de Vocbench.

  18. Jul 2015
  19. Dec 2014