the origin of OWL
Piotr Bański
I have recently used the term OWL to mean "Ordinary Working Linguist",
in a markup-related submission, causing the reviewers to wonder whether
the term is in any way established. I am sure I saw a reference to it in
at least two papers (co-)authored by Scott Farrar (and one of them I
cited there) and I'm not so sure anymore whether I saw it used by Gary
Simons, too.
Can anyone please point me to the origin of the acronym, if it's
traceable, or at least comment on its origins? I'd like to supply a
proper reference, the more so that in the context of markup languages,
the SIL?/EMELD?/GOLD?-related expansion is definitely not the first one
that springs to mind :-)
Thanks in advance,
Piotr
Evelyn Richter
Thank you very much for your email. Scott Farrar and Gary Simons can
certainly answer this in much more detail than I can, but if I
understand your question correctly, you might find this link helpful
and it might answer your question:
http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/
Best regards,
Evelyn Richter
LINGUIST List Editor
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Helen Aristar-Dry
The person who would know the answer to that is John Lawler, lately of
U. of Michigan but now retired. I don't know his current email address,
but he has a prominent web page. He used the term long before E-MELD
and attributed it to someone (Charles Fillmore?) who had used it in a book.
Sorry I couldn't be more help.
-Helen
--
*************************************************************************Helen
Aristar-Dry,
Professor of Linguistics
Eastern Michigan University
Director, Institute of Language Information and Technology
2000 Huron River Drive #104
Ypsilanti, MI 48197
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Piotr Bański
Thanks for the prompt reply and the chance to make my query more
precise: I'm definitely after the "ordinary working linguist" sense, I'd
love to know its origin in order to attribute it properly in a paper
aimed at audience definitely used to the other OWL, the markuppy one
that you mention :-)
For now I attribute the term to Farrar & Moran (2008), but it seems to
me that I came across this version of the acronym in a publication (or a
mailing list exchange??) from before 2008.
Best,
Piotr
On 2010-06-29 00:06, Evelyn Richter wrote:
> Dear Piotr,
>
> Thank you very much for your email. Scott Farrar and Gary Simons can
> certainly answer this in much more detail than I can, but if I
> understand your question correctly, you might find this link helpful
> and it might answer your question:
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/
>
> Best regards,
> Evelyn Richter
> LINGUIST List Editor
>
Helen Aristar-Dry
I think you're sending him a link on the Ontology Working Language, used
by Protege, which is a different thing.
Best,
-Helen
--
Damir Ćavar
there are many places you can find OWL = Ordinary Working Linguist, = us, sort of
, also in a paper by Scott and Steven Moran (The e-Linguistics Toolkit) (is it 2008???). But, this term (not sure about the acronym) can be found in Lawler and Aristar Dry (1998) in the intro of the book "Using Computers in Linguistics". Maybe even elsewhere... This, however, is not a feature of OWL and neither related to W3C... best wishes
Damir
Evelyn Richter
read and reread the original email before sending my first response
and the way I understood it was unfortunately wrong. :(
Evelyn
--
Evelyn Richter, M.A.
Email: evelyn....@gmail.com
"The next time you feel unhappy, remember where you came from and
where you are going. Rather than focus on things that dampen your
thoughts with sorrow, choose to focus on those things that fill your
soul with hope." (Dieter F. Uchtdorf, 1 Nov 2009)
Piotr Bański
Thanks so much! :-)
I got there, got the book, got the quote. That was fast! :-)
Best,
Piotr
On 2010-06-29 00:22, Damir �avar wrote:
> Hi Evelyn, hi Piotr,
>
> there are many places you can find OWL = Ordinary Working Linguist, =
> us, sort of :-), also in a paper by Scott and Steven Moran (The
> e-Linguistics Toolkit) (is it 2008???). But, this term (not sure about
> the acronym) can be found in Lawler and Aristar Dry (1998) in the intro
> of the book "Using Computers in Linguistics". Maybe even elsewhere...
> This, however, is not a feature of OWL and neither related to W3C... :-)
>
> best wishes
> Damir
>
>
> On Mon, 2010-06-28 at 18:06 -0400, Evelyn Richter wrote:
>
>> Dear Piotr,
>>
>> Thank you very much for your email. Scott Farrar and Gary Simons can
>> certainly answer this in much more detail than I can, but if I
>> understand your question correctly, you might find this link helpful
>> and it might answer your question:
>>
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Evelyn Richter
>> LINGUIST List Editor
>>
Mike Maxwell
> I have recently used the term OWL to mean "Ordinary Working Linguist",
> in a markup-related submission, causing the reviewers to wonder whether
> the term is in any way established. I am sure I saw a reference to it in
> at least two papers (co-)authored by Scott Farrar (and one of them I
> cited there) and I'm not so sure anymore whether I saw it used by Gary
> Simons, too.
>
> Can anyone please point me to the origin of the acronym, if it's
> traceable, or at least comment on its origins?
It was in use in SIL probably back in the '80s, maybe earlier. I didn't
find it in any of the titles here
http://www.sil.org/linguistics/nol.htm
but that's where I'd expect it to be. There's a 1997 citation here:
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=NRSIUpdate07
and a 1996 citation here:
http://www.sil.org/computing/computing_environment.html
But as I say, it was in frequent use at least a decade earlier. It's
coining on the part of field linguists (particularly SIL field
linguists) was a reaction to the disdain with which some theoretical
linguists looked down on field work, or at least on field work that
wasn't grounded in some (acceptable) theory.
--
Mike Maxwell
What good is a universe without somebody around to look at it?
--Robert Dicke, Princeton physicist
Piotr Bański
Thanks for shedding more light on the origins of the term and for
fleshing out the extra subtleties that I wouldn't suspect to be there
anymore in '98 but that make so much sense if its history is much older.
Ah, I'm so glad you're on this list as well :-)
Much obliged,
Piotr
On 2010-06-29 02:19, Mike Maxwell wrote: