imclab / hyperdictionary

a tool for compiling, showing, cross-linking, and otherwise manipulating dictionaries, corpora, linguistic phylogenies, etc.

Kura 2¶ ↑

Purpose¶ ↑

Kura 2 is an open source, Ruby on Rails based database backed web application with Ruby gem library for backend functionality support, possibly with other interfaces (eg native GUI or iPhone).

Our primary audience in the near term is field linguists and conlangers, whose needs for language documentation are very similar.

Later on, this audience will expand to general linguistics research and general public use as a next-gen dictionary.

It will support, in rough order of priority:

• all standard rich web 2.0 app features (including REST API) - see separate readme

• dictionary / lexicon management (entry, search, etc)

• transcription and annotation management

• custom collocations

• automatic conversion between different phonetic encodings (eg IPA, SAMPA, X-SAMPA)

• automatic conversion to & from plain text interlinears

• import and export with ELAN, Toolbox, Shoebox, Kura, WordNet, & plain CSV

• rich word search and relationships - eg synonym, hypernym, rhyme, written similarity, derivation, diachrony, etc

• full integration of extant wordnets/synsets/lexica (as licenses permit)

• semiautomatic application of language-wide changes or reinterpretations (e.g. phonetic drift, morpheme reparsing, etc)

• automatic derivation of phonotactic and morphosyntactic rules from corpora

• semiautomatic suggestion of new words for conlangers

• partial translation between arbitrary languages

Kura 2 will be available freely for non-commercial use only. Please contact us to obtain a license for commercial use.

It will be available both in this form (as run-your-own OSS), as well as freely hosted by the Language Creation Society.

The first component of Kura 2, the rich generic web app, will be forked into its own respository, and available under the same licensing terms. Its purpose is to make it easy to create rich applications without having to re-code all the same old stuff over and over again. Please see its readme file for more information.

If you are interested in participating, please join our mailing list. We need Ruby / Rails coders, complex data entry scripters, and testers.

Links¶ ↑

• Website

• Tracker

• Mailing list

• Source repository

Inspiration¶ ↑

• Kura old site

• Linguist’s Shoebox

• ELAN

• WordNet

• EtymOnline

• Wiktionary

• Natural Language ToolKit