Multi-Layer Dictionary (2016)

The 60 words:<p>to see, saw, seen. thing, something, what. this, these. the other, another, else, is the same as, be, am, are, being, was, were. one of. two of. person, people. many of, much of. inside. not, do not, does not, did not, some of. all of. there is, there are. more than, live, alive. big. small. very, kind of. if, then. touch. far from. near to, in a place, someplace, where. above. on a side of, hear, heard. say to, said about. word. true.

If you like this, you&#x27;ll definitely enjoy the talk &quot;Growing a Language&quot;, by Guy Steele:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0</a>

This is very interesting -- a kind of topological sort of the dictionary.<p>It seems like a very natural thing to want to do with subject-specific glossaries as well. Often when I approach a new topic or hobby I want a glossary of all the jargon up front, and I want the words ordered from least to most demanding of in-knowledge.

I&#x27;d like to see research on this. I have an MA in TESOL and teach ESL, so this is very within my field. While some of what&#x27;s happening here is basically a self-guided version of classwork, a lot of it seems to rely on very logically precise understandings (defining &#x27;flat&#x27; as the shape of unmoving water). I can say from experience that students really struggle with being given a single example like that, even when they know all the words being used; it&#x27;s just not how most people think. Visual aids and&#x2F;or multiple examples are pretty essential, and often it requires watching a student to see what&#x27;s registering and what isn&#x27;t.

These are also known as Semantic Primes: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Semantic_primes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Semantic_primes</a>

If true, this is interesting from an academic perspective: word meanings can be derived from a space of 60 dimensions. But I’m not still not convinced of the value with respect to language learning.<p>Learning how language is spoken from the fundamental 60 words sounds like trying to learn mathematics from its fundamental axioms. It seems like you might just get caught in a long list of definitions where you might be faster off trying to internalise some higher level useful concepts first.

Has there been any attempts to &#x27;translate&#x27; this into other languages? I&#x27;m struggling most often with vocabulary first, whereas the grammar is much easier for me to grasp (programming helps?)

Reminds me of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach in linguistics by Anna Wierzbicka, Cliff Goddard and others. Nice to see, that there is actually quite some overlap both in quantity as well as in the actual words.

This reminded me of the minimalist constructed language Toki Pona. As the author herself puts it - &quot; It was my attempt to understand the meaning of life in 120 words.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tokipona.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tokipona.org&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Toki_Pona" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Toki_Pona</a>

Just 60 words plus a huge context shared with the reader through living a human life (so not a lot of hope of feeding this into an algorithm and having it do anything resembling understanding).<p>Or perhaps with thorough explanations something like this could help bootstrap understanding by a machine?

This reminds me a little of &quot;English Through Pictures&quot; by Richards and Gibson, and &quot;English Made Easy&quot; by Crighton and Koster. Both use images to provide concrete examples for those words that can be illustrated visually.

It&#x27;s conceptually interesting, but it also strikes me as a problem that doesn&#x27;t need solving.<p>Having worked with and taught foreign language, nobody learns the first 1,000 words of a language from a same-language dictionary, nor should they.<p>Children learn from the world; adults learn from classes or a translating dictionary. (Only intermediate&#x2F;advanced level learners start to use a native dictionary.)<p>The idea of &quot;bootstrapping&quot; language knowledge from a single dictionary just... isn&#x27;t going to be necessary for anyone?

Tangential, I have always wondered why compact or pocket dictionaries (the single language ones) contain the simplest words. If space if of the essence, why not skip the words that everybody knows (like &quot;table&quot; or &quot;shoe&quot;) and use the saved space for difficult words? After all, those are the ones you are likely to look up.

I suppose this answers <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19331307" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19331307</a> &quot;What&#x27;s the minimum number of words you&#x27;d need to define all other words?&quot;

There is nothing wrong with circularity in dictionaries, though. This is a solution in search of a problem.<p>It may be the case that the definition A happens to use some word B, in whose definition we find word C, whose definition uses A. However, that isn&#x27;t really a problem, because these definitions are not simply substitutions of exactly one word for another. The definition of A uses numerous other words other than B, that of B uses words in addition to C, and C uses words in addition to A.<p>That is, the existence of cycles in definitions doesn&#x27;t necessarily make the definitions irresolvably circular.

ash =<p>When something burns and becomes many very small dry pieces that moving air can cause to move.<p>Kind of tree.

What about grammar? You need grammar to form the definitions so you need to teach it at some point.<p>One approach would be to mix in grammar bits into the word flashcards. Like:<p>Flashcard 1: word 1 F 2: word 2 F 3: grammar bit 1 F 4: word 3 ...<p>You could use the grammar bits provided by English Profile based on the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.englishprofile.org&#x2F;english-grammar-profile&#x2F;egp-online" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.englishprofile.org&#x2F;english-grammar-profile&#x2F;egp-o...</a>

Could someone add links to all the words in the definitions, linking to the definitions of those words?<p>I&#x27;ve seen that done for a different language, though in that case the fully connected component had more than 60 works. I think it was more like 120.<p>Of course it doesn&#x27;t make sense to do this competitively because it&#x27;s so unclear what counts as an adequate definition.<p>I&#x27;m not sure this sort of dictionary would help me learn a language: I think probably not much. But it&#x27;s definitely fun in a philosophical way.

i once solved a similar problem with set theoretic approach using matroid theory and the greedy method for constructing a matroid basis using a thesaurus as my independence oracle. This was over a decade ago, so I no longer recall the results, but it certainly seems similar in the goal of finding a primal set of words that can in some way define all others.

What a great way to learn a new language. Would pay for another language of this.

this is great because: 1, I can review words by learning the next level 2, I can use english immediately no matter which level I am at. because at any level, I have the ability to explain anything