Re: [edict-jmdict] Conjugations and PoS tags for だ, くれる

[Stuart McGraw <smcg4191@********>]

On 07/02/2014 01:35 PM, René Malenfant rene_malenfant@hotmail.com [edict-jmdict] wrote:
> 1) The entry for くれる is marked more clearly now for human usage than
> it would be if the note were removed and the PoS changed to an
> obscure PoS tag.

There is no need to remove the note, the note and a
better PoS are not mutually exclusive.

> くれろ used to be common, and it still gets used, so I
> think having it in the conjugation table with a usage note on the
> entry (as at present) makes more sense.

I am not an expert but in my limited exposure to spoken 
Japanese (mostly through movies/TV) I think I hear くれ 
way more often than くれろ.  (Possibly I recognize the 
former but don't realize when I hear the latter.)  But 
if it is true (as think it is) that くれ is in fact more 
common than くれろ...

If one is presenting a table of conjugations, one should 
not present a table containing a lightly used variant and
with the common variant relegated to a footnote.  That 
strikes me as just plain bad user-interface design.

Further, even if one wants to do that, to produce that 
footnote requires a program to know that くれる is in fact 
not a v1 verb (like every other v1 verb) but is different.
The point of a v1-i (or whatever) PoS tag is to provide 
that information consistently, in the same way it is
provided for almost every other modern verb.

Looking at the kanji to make the determination is an 
unnecessary burden.

Consider a conjugator that conjgates romaji.  It has to be 
told which "kureru" is being conjugated.  If it is unable 
to use a JMdict PoS for this then most designers I suspect 
would create some sort of custom tag to pass that information.  
I.e., invent their own v1-i tag.

And if one is conjugating JMdict verbs, using the entry 
seq number would identify the irregular くれる more easily 
than poking around through possibly multiple kanji.  

Providing a v1-i PoS in JMdict tag simplifies all of the 
above for everybody.

> 2) いい could be handled simply by splitting it out from the entry for
> よい and making よい [adj-i] while making いい an [exp] or [unc] with an
> xref to よい and a note that いい doesn’t inflect. I don’t think an
> additional PoS is needed and if one is added, it definitely shouldn’t
> include よい; よい is just a regular old i-adjective. And いい is just a
> modified version of よい that has no inflections of its own, so I think
> it would be wrong to say that it has its own PoS with its own
> inflection pattern that includes よくない, etc.; those forms belong to
> the regular adjective よい.

But is that the way yoi/ii is presented in textbooks, Japanese 
classes etc?  Is that a standard and common linguistic point 
of view?  It doesn't jibe at all with how I was taught about 
yoi/ii -- IIRC most of my books teach that いい is a reading 
of 良い but only in the non-past/affirmative.

I think it is to JMdict's benefit not to get too far out there 
in unconventional linguistic territory.

(Not saying your presentation is "out there", just asking.)

And what about the 60 or 70 entries that end with 良い・よい/いい.
and are currently 'adj-i'.  Would they all be split similarly?

> 3) A number of the entries we have marked as [aux] or [aux-v] have
> their own conjugation patterns (See for example here:
> https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8A%A9%E5%8B%95%E8%A9%9E_%28%E5%9B%BD%E6%96%87%E6%B3%95%29).

Sorry, that's well beyond my ability to make any sense of.

That there aux and aux-v words that have completely irregular
conjugations patterns is not disputed by me.  That also seems
to be true of pre-modern verbs whose conjugations don't even
fit the categories used for the conjugation tables in my
conjugator, WWWjdic's or dozens of others on the internet 
and in books.

Do any of those words have conjugations of an importance in 
modern Japanese that matches that of だ?

> In addition, which conjugation of だ is currently not covered by its
> own entry in EDICT? だろう・だろ, で, な, and なら are all in there already
> (though the entry for な needs work), and I’ve just submitted an entry
> for だった, which as far as I can tell is the only form that was
> missing.  (And of course である and です, etc. are in there too.) Does it
> really need its own PoS when all of its conjugated forms have their
> own entry? 

All?  Where is じゃなっかた、じゃありませんでした、or a bunch of 
others.  Where in the entry for だろう does it say it is the 
volitional form of だ?

> Have I forgotten some needed forms? The [aux]/[aux-v] tags
> are there as a grab-bag for these kinds of items, so I think they are
> appropriate for だ.

Trolling through entries associated only by "see:" links
might be a good learning experience but it is a lousy way to 
present conjugations.  A table shows the relationships between
the conjugations and to other conjugatable words.  It provides
structure that very hard to discern following your suggestion.

I presume this is why many textbooks have conjugation tables
for reference in an appendix rather than solely presenting the 
various conjugations in separate chapters.

> Rene

> [...]