Thursday, January 26, 2012

8. SUPPLEMENTARIES


In a band horizontally across the middle of the OVERVIEW panel is a collection of information and analysis fields. These are illustrated below in ‘layout view’, which shows the functions of the fields and other components.
8.1 CATEGORY, REGION, LANGUAGE
Fig. 8.1 The left-hand end of the ‘Supplementary’ zone
  • Category (shades of green)
For many of the entries, excluding sentence,the category is revealed in the ‘Category’ fields. Categories include ‘fauna’, ‘flora’, ‘body parts’, ‘kin terms’ and many others. There are also many subcategories. These fields permit searching the database for all reptiles,  say, or all words to do with the ‘firmament’ (sun, moon, star, cloud etc.)
  • Map area Geoscience (yellow, red border)
Inthe ‘map area Geoscience’ is entered the rectangle name  derived from <http://www.ga.gov.au/map/names/>. For example, ‘Warragamba’.  This yields information about the geographical location of the place sought, and much more:
Fig. 8.2 The Geoscience Australia place search header
In particular it provides a map, locating the place concerned within a named rectangle. It is this rectangle name that is entered in the ‘map area Geoscience’ field:
Fig. 8.3 The Geoscience map of the location, and the named rectangles
In the ALLSYD database, the word ‘Sydney’, relating to the rectangle in which ‘Warragamba’ occurs in the above illustration, appears in the ‘map area Geoscience’ field in all instances.  But in the Wiradhuri database, which language extends over numerous of the Geoscience rectangles, as the following map shows:
a number of different rectangle names are inserted into the ‘map area Geoscience’ field, the following illustration showing how the Wiradhuri language (pale brown) spreads over much of New South Wales.
Fig. 8.4 A grid of Geoscience rectangles drawn on the Horton-AIATSIS map (NSW portion)
The Horton map
 does not show precise language boundaries and not everyone agrees with the language names, but it gives a good overview of language group location. The Geoscience search locates a place in a rectangle, and the above Horton map enables a language to be assigned to the rectangle name recorded in the area concerned.
  • Dixon code 02 JS (pale green: aqua)
  • Alongside the ‘map area Geoscience’ field is the ‘Dixon code 02 JS’ field, the first showing the area of the country, and the second showing the language spoken there. 
Fig. 8.5 A code number in the Dixon code 02 JS field yields a language name ...
Fig. 8.6 The code ‘Na1’ has yielded ‘Awabakal’, drawn from the related Dixon language name database
The language information is drawn from one of the auxiliary databases, ‘DIXON LANGUAGE LIST’, shown in the diagram in Fig. 1. Often the codes inserted are Dixon’s, or may be based on them, and this is why the field has ‘JS’ at the end to show it may be an adaptation. Insertion of the code number brings up Dixon’s language name in the ‘Dixon list Horton panel. 
To know the correct code to insert is necessary to open up the ‘DIXON LANGUAGE LIST’ database and have a look.
LANGUAGE DETAILS (shades of blue)
  • Comment
Any comment about a language in the ‘DIXON LANGUAGE LIST’ database appears in this ‘Comment’ field. There is often no data here.
  • Language name
The ‘language name’ field shows the name used in the ‘DIXON LANGUAGE LIST’ database. In this Layout presentation, the double colon before a field name indicates that it is using a field from some related database.
Fig. 8.7 Supplementary fields in Layout and standard views
  • Language area
Information about where the particular entry might have been collected is entered into the ‘Language area’ field.
  • Language
The language name is entered in the ‘language’ field.
  • Langshort
The language abbreviation used in the ‘DIXON LANGUAGE LIST’ database appears in the ‘langshort’ field.
A red border is often used to indicate visually that a field is a relational one drawing data from another database.

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