A word is a very specific application of a pattern. Words are often clustered around a core meaning, and any given word may belong to two or more clusters. Each cluster, carrying a distinct core meaning, represents a pattern.

When we organize words of a language into a thesaurus, one big task is to identify these clusters. The next big task is to organize them into some sort of structure, not only to indicate closeness of relationship based on meaning, but to facilitate lookup, searching, and placing based on meaning. A good thesaurus is thus organized according to an intricate, multiple-nested network of patterns. One modest effort towards this, an obvious takeoff on Roget's Thesaurus 3rd ed., is partially built up at http://www.philthesaurus.schtuff.com (as of 26 Jan 2006).

One application of this scheme is to build up a multilingual thesaurus of words in various Philippine languages, which had barely started at http://www.iraia.net/wika.htm (as of early 2006).

My thesaurus project at the schtuff.com site has been long defunct, and has been overtaken by my other projects at www.iraia.net, which continues to operate as of today.

Author: JunVerzola

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CategoryOrganization