The Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Revolutionaries II

Notes from episode 2 of a BBC4 series on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Notes from episode 1 are here.

After focusing on a new realistic approach to painting sacred scenes and scenes from modern urban life, the Pre-Raphaelites turned to a new approach to landscape painting, featuring a microscopic examination of the natural world, with closely observed scientific fidelity (following the ideas of John Ruskin). Landscape painting had been traditionally executed in the studio from sketches. John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt used the newly established train system to get out of London into the countryside, along with all their paints and easels and canvasses.

John Everett Millais' Ophelia (1852):

This painting breaks a number of established 'rules' - for example, the river flows (counterintuitively) from right to left, rather than the traditional left-to-right. Many of the featured flowers come straight from Shakespeare's text, and are painted in exquisite, botanical detail. The backdrop was painted in situ in Surrey, and the figure of drowned Ophelia was painted in the studio, with Elizabeth Siddal in a big bath of water. Unlike his earlier controversial works, this painting was highly acclaimed.

William Holman Hunt's The Hireling Shepherd (1851):

This painting was painted on top of a white background, rather than the traditional dark foundation - to try and capture the luminosity of nature under the bright sun. Minute details were painted with a very fine brush - every blade of grass and every eyelash.

John Everett Millais' Portrait of John Ruskin (1854):

Ruskin commissioned Millais to paint his portrait against a Scottish landscape. There is no horizon, which was itself an innovation in landscape portraiture. The painting focuses on the detail of the rock on which he is standing, with geological detail. Millais fell in love with Ruskin's wife Effie, who was still a virgin after 5 years of marriage. They married in 1855, and the relation between Millais and Ruskin never recovered. Ruskin diverted his patronage to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who continued to embrace medievalism, rather than the realism of the other Pre-Raphaelites.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The First Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice: Dante Drawing the Angel (1853):

William Holman Hunt's Our English Coasts (1852):

This was painted at Hastings on the Sussex coast, with careful depictions of the geological formations of the collapsing coastline (influenced by Charles Lyell's great work on British geology). The sheep assembled on the brink of the cliff are a "metaphor for what is going on in Britain at this time", i.e. fear of a resumption of the Napoleonic Wars, with Napoleon III recently established on the French throne. The tiny steamship in the background emphasises the modernity of the scene. One sheep is caught in the brambles, appealing to the viewer for help. The painting is painted at the end of the day (see the lengthening shadows), adding to the ominous atmosphere.

Close associate Ford Madox Brown's Pretty Baa-Lambs (1852):

The entire scene is painted out-of-doors (including the models, probably for the first time in painting), ensuring consistent conditions of light. Many of the details of light and shade (e.g. coloured shadows) are also innovative. This painting was not executed according to the 'rules', but by fresh, new observation.

Ford Madox Brown's An English Autumn Afternoon (1852-55):

This is the view from the back window of Brown's cottage in Hampstead. It doesn't look like any landscape painting ever made before, with its panoramic perspective and microscopic detail. It is both deeply objective and deeply subjective. The canvas is shaped like an eye. This 'immediacy of vision', almost photographic, is a property of all the Pre-Raphaelite paintings.

200 sit up challenge: week 1

Day 1	Day 3	Day 5
15 sit-ups	15 sit-ups	17 sit-ups
60 seconds	60 seconds	60 seconds
18 sit-ups	18 sit-ups	22 sit-ups
60 seconds	60 seconds	60 seconds
10 sit-ups	15 sit-ups	14 sit-ups
60 seconds	60 seconds	60 seconds
10 sit-ups	15 sit-ups	14 sit-ups
60 seconds	60 seconds	60 seconds
>14 sit-ups	>18 sit-ups	>20 sit-ups

From here.

100 push up challenge: week 1

Day 1	Day 3	Day 5
10 push-ups	10 push-ups	11 push-ups
60 seconds	90 seconds	120 seconds
12 push-ups	12 push-ups	15 push-ups
60 seconds	90 seconds	120 seconds
7 push-ups	8 push-ups	9 push-ups
60 seconds	90 seconds	120 seconds
7 push-ups	8 push-ups	9 push-ups
60 seconds	90 seconds	120 seconds
>9 push-ups	>12 push-ups	>13 push-ups

From here.

Saturday swimming

70 lengths (1750 yards) in 45 minutes.

Argument diagramming

Chris Reed, Douglas Walton and Fabrizio Macagno (2007). "Argument diagramming in logic, law and artificial intelligence". The Knowledge Engineering Review, 22(1), 87-109.

Some notable fields: informal logic, argumentation theory, evidence law, legal reasoning. Argument diagramming was first used in these fields, but is recently attracting interest in AI and CS.

Argument diagrams - nodes/vertices represent propositions, and arcs/edges represent inferences.

Argument Markup Language is an XML application for representing arguments/argument diagrams. Araucaria is a software tool for interactively creating an argument diagram by annotating a source text with propositions and inferences.

Enthymemes - arguments which have implicit premises or conclusions, which are not explicitly expressed in the discourse.

The 'milk' argument ("Drink milk - Lose weight?"):

Looking to drop a few pounds? Including enough milk in your reduced-calorie diet could provide the nutritional support you need for healthy, effective weight loss. In fact, emerging research suggests that drinking three glasses of milk daily when dieting may promote the loss of body fat while maintaining more muscle. The calcium and protein in milk may help explain these weight loss benefits. Recent studies indicate that calcium is part of the body's natural system for burning fat, while protein is essential for building and keeping muscle. And milk is the only beverage that naturally provides the unique combination of calcium in protein for healthy, effective weight loss support. In fact, no other single food item provides more calcium to America's diet than milk. So it's time to add healthy weight loss to the already extensive list of good things that milk can do for your body. If you're serious about losing weight the healthy way, make sure to exercise, limit your calories and drink at least three glasses a day of low fat or fat-free milk, which has the same amount of calcium, protein and other nutrients as whole milk. For more information on these key studies, and additional important research on dairy and weight loss, visit healthyweightwithmilk.com

Jobs in Dundee

Two RA jobs on the (EPSRC-funded) Dialectical Argumentation Machines project.

Thursday swimming

60 lengths (1500 yards) in 40 minutes.

Latitude and longitude

The latitude of a place expresses how far north of the Equator it is.

• North Pole: 90º
• Arctic Circle: 66.56756º
• Tropic of Cancer: 23.?º
• Equator: 0º
• Tropic of Capricorn: -23.?º
• Antarctic Circle: -66.56083º
• south pole: -90º

The longitude of a place expressed how far east of Greenwich it is. The International Date Line can be expressed as either 180º or -180º.

Edinburgh is approximately 56º latitude, -3.2º longitude. In Google Maps, this is expressed using the following URL:

http://maps.google.com/?ll=56,-3.2&z=10

Google maps basics

Start by going to the URL http://maps.google.com. Assuming you are signed in, you should see something like the following:

This page has three parts:

1. the search pane, at the top
2. the info pane, on the left
3. the current map pane, on the right

The info pane can be minimised, in order to increase the size of the current map pane.

Things you can do with the current map pane:

1. Click on one of the arrow icons at the top left to scroll north, south, east or west to a new map. If you click on the hand icon in the centre, you will be taken back to the original map.
2. Click and hold the mouse button - the pointer change from a hand to a clenched fist, which you can drag around to scroll in any direction you want to a new map.
3. Click on the plus or minus icons on the left in order to zoom in or out to a new map. You can also drag the bar between the two icons to zoom faster.
4. Double click the mouse button to centre the map on a new point AND zoom in one level, thus giving a new map.
5. Use the hyperlinks at the top right of the map pane to switch between map, satellite (with or without place names) and terrain view of the current map.

Other things you can do:

1. Reset your default map, using the relevant link in the info pane.
2. See the URL of the current map, using the 'link' link at the top right of the current map pane.
3. Email that URL to someone, using the 'send' link.
4. Right click, 'what's here?'

Google mapplet basics

From this page here.

A mapplet is an XML file on your own webserver, which overlays stuff on the standard Google maps page. You run the mapplet in your webbrowser as follows:

http://maps.google.com/ig/add?synd=mpl&pid=mpl&moduleurl=...

For example, here is mine.

Here is the code for my mapplet:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Module>
  <ModulePrefs title="Bum bum bum" 
               description="Says bum a lot"
               author="Mark McConville"
               author_email="markmcco@gmail.com"
               height="150">
    <!-- load the Google mapplets API -->
    <Require feature="sharedmap"/>    
  </ModulePrefs>
  <Content type="html"><![CDATA[
    <!-- Add a title to the left-hand info pane -->
    <h2>Bum bum bum!</h2>
    <!-- Manipulate the map pane -->
    <script>
      <!-- create a new map -->
      var map = new GMap2();
      <!-- centre the map in middle of Mediterranean and zoom out to level 2 -->
      var point = new GLatLng(37.71859,6.679688);
      map.setCenter(point,2);
      <!-- add a marker/pin to the point -->
      var marker = new GMarker(point);
      map.addOverlay(marker);
      <!-- add an info bubble to the marker -->
      marker.openInfoWindowHtml("Bum bum bum!");
    </script>
    ]]>
  </Content>
</Module>

Some facts about Heathrow Airport

From the first episode of the BBC4 TV series 'The Secret Life of the Airport':

1. The original airport was built (in the late 1940s) with six runways (each about one mile in length) in a star of David form. This was because contemporary airplanes needed to take off into the wind, in order to gain lift. The two east-west runways were extended during the early 1970s, and the other runways were removed to allow for terminal expansions or turned into taxiways
2. The three original terminal buildings were built during the 1950s and 1960s at the centre of the airport, i.e. within the internal hexagon. Tunnels were built under the runways to allow access. One of the flaws in this design was lack of space to build carparks - the original architects had assumed that air travel would always be reserved for the rich, who would be driven to the terminal buildings by their chauffeurs. Terminals 4 and 5 were built later outside the original star, on the south and west of the airport respectively.

Tuesday swimming

60 lengths (1500 yards) in 40 minutes.

How the Celts saved Britain - Salvation

Episode of 2 of Dan Snow's new history programme How the Celts Saved Britain, where he "blows the lid on the traditional, Anglo-centric view of history and reveals how the Irish saved Britain from cultural oblivion during the Dark Ages". My summary of episode 1 can be found here.

Mid-sixth century: The former Roman province of Britannia had reverted to an uncivilised (i.e. illiterate, pagan, iron-age, inward-looking) patchwork of warring Anglo-Saxon tribes, ruling over the native Britons. In contrast, Ireland was a civilised (i.e. literate, christian, technologically advanced, outward-looking) society, dotted with monasteries. The Irish/Gaelic kingdom of Dalriada was based at Dunadd in present-day Argyll, and the rest of Scotland was dominated by Picts.

563: Twelve Irish monks sailed from Ireland to Dunadd, led by Colum Cille (later known as Saint Columba, 521-597), a rising star of the Irish church (and descendant of the high kings of Ireland). Columba intended to spread the christian faith in Pictland, and to this end he asked the king of Dalriada to give him a piece of land to build a church. He was given the little island of Iona, on the western edge of Scotland.

Iona was to become the 'Westminster Abbey' of early medieval Scotland, a place where religious and political power came together. As a mark of this, Columba blessed the new king of Dalriada, Áedán mac Gabráin (d. 609) on Iona, in a christian ceremony. Iona also become the main cultural centre for Celtic christianity - It was on Iona that the Book of Kells (a lavishly illustrated copy of the four gospels) was created, one of the great achievements of western art.

In the late 560s, after the church on Iona was complete, Columba set out along the Great Glen, to start converting the Picts. He confronted King Bridei (d. 585) at his fortress near Inverness, impressing him with his christian 'magic' (for example, chasing off the Loch Ness monster!). Over the course of time, the Picts became christianised and subsumed into Gaelic culture and language, thus forming the race of the Scots (see the Aberlemno standing stones in Angus).

Down in England, an attempt was already being made to reintroduce christianity. In 597 Pope Gregory the Great (540-604) sent a mission, led by the Benedictine monk Augustine of Canterbury (d. 604), to the Kingdom of Kent to meet King Æthelberht (560-616), who had married a christian Frankish princess, Bertha. This was part of Gregory's imperial ambitions to reassert centralised Roman control over western European christians, and in particular to counteract the influence of the (self-governing) Irish monasteries. Æthelberht himself converted to christianity, and mission moved on to London (in the Kingdom of Essex), building St Paul's church (on the site of the present-day cathedral). However, the mission failed to make any further inroads into Anglo-Saxon Britain, and ended up being thrown out of London after 20 years or so.

In 634, King Oswald (604-642) returned to Bamburgh as King of Northumbria, the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. He had spent the previous 18 years in exile in Ireland and Iona, where he had become a christian. Determined to turn Northumbria into a christian kingdom, he brought with him a young monk from Iona, called Aiden (d. 651). Aiden, the last of the great Irish missionaries, established the first church on Lindisfarne in 635. This was the nucleus from where Irish priests would spread the christian message across the north of England, building churches as they went (including Escomb in County Durham and Hexham Abbey, both built largely from recycled Roman stone).

Wilfrid of York was a monk trained at Lindisfarne, and one of the first to travel to Rome to meet the Pope. He went on to be instrumental in establishing written law in England, as well as establishing centralised Roman control over the English church, causing tensions with the Irish monks of Lindisfarne. Things came to a head in Bamburgh in 663, involving a clash over the correct date of Easter. King Oswiu came from the Irish tradition, his queen was from Kent and followed the Roman tradition, where Easter Sunday was one week behind. The king and queen couldn't have sex until Lent had finished, thus triggering a marital crisis! In 664 the king convened a synod at Whitby Abbey to settle the date of Easter once and for all (as well as to resolve the concomitant power struggle in the English church). This synod pitted Wilfred against the Irish monk Colman, Aiden's successor as Abbot of Lindisfarne. As a result, the king decided to join the European mainstream, probably for political reasons. Colman and his monks returned to Iona in a huff, with the remains of Saint Aiden. This was a fatal blow to the prestige of the Iona and the Irish monasteries, later symbolised by the massacre of the Iona monks by the Vikings in the late 8th century, bringing the great age of Irish christianity to a bloody end.

Saturday swimming

60 lengths (1500 yards) in 40 minutes.

Learning contracts

A learning contract is a written agreement between a tutor and a group of students, specifying:

• What will the students learn?
• How will they learn it?
• When will they learn it?
• How will they demonstrate what they have learned?
• Who will evaluate what they have learned?

Here are some good reasons for having an explicit learning contract, drafted by both tutor and students:

• students feel more involved in the running of the course, and hence more motivated
• learning can be made more relevant to individual students' needs
• students can clarify their goals at the outset
• it can offer a clear framework for struggling students to tackle their difficulties

It is a good idea to make drafting a learning contract one of the first activities in a course.

Thursday swimming

60 lengths (1500 yards) in 40 minutes.

Disadvantages of online learning

1. both students and tutor can get to feel isolated
2. students need access to appropriate technology, as well as knowledge of how it works
3. students need to be self-motivated
4. students receive delayed feedback
5. students may be unfamiliar with a student-centered format
6. a high level of participation is required, in order for the course to be successful
7. written communication lacks the customary visual cues (e.g. facial expression, body language), as well as tone of voice
8. students may fear publishing their immediate thoughts on a permanently existing forum
9. multiple simultaneous conversations may lead to information overload

Advantages of online courses

Online courses have numerous advantages over tradition face-to-face courses:

1. students have more choice of courses (including disabled students); courses can attract more students
2. students don't have to travel to class, hence saving time, money, and the environment
3. the student grouping is more diverse, including students from different cultures, students with disabilities, etc.
4. students can retain more anonymity, thus reducing the opportunity for discrimination
5. students are not distracted by others' physical presence
6. students can fit learning in alongside their other commitments (i.e. work, children) more easily
7. students can work at their own pace, taking as much time as they need for each activity
8. students and tutor usually construct a stronger sense of shared community, since there is generally more interaction between students themselves
9. students can focus on the aspects of the course which are most relevant to them personally
10. students idiosyncratic learning styles can be accommodated more easily
11. the information discussed in the course can include the latest developments; often the tutor can learn as much from the students as vice versa
12. students have more time to reflect before articulating their ideas
13. the tutor and the students have access to a fully searchable record of written contributions

Special features of online tutoring

Five ways in which online tutoring differs from traditional face-to-face tutoring:

1. location - the tutor and the students are not all in the same room, or even on the same continent
2. time - the tutor and the students are not all participating at the same time, or even in the same time zone
3. pace - the students are not all working through activities at the same pace
4. interaction - there is more interaction between students themselves, and less interaction involving the tutor
5. communication - almost all communication is written rather than spoken

Berge's four roles of an online tutor

People who write about online tutoring like to cite Zane Berge's Four Roles for an Online Tutor (1995):

1. pegagogical - moderating, facilitating, asking, probing, answering, steering, explaining, guiding, referring, evaluating, critiquing
2. social - welcoming, encouraging, praising, reinforcing, resolving, entertaining, motivating, team-building, collaborating
3. managerial - instructing, clarifying, forwarding, monitoring, recording, following up, arranging, informing, fixing, initiating, redirecting, summarising, notifying
4. technical - familiarising, confidence-building, reassuring, advising, referring

These roles are also characteristic of traditional face-to-face tutoring. However, online tutoring differs in the relative proportion of time taken up by each role - online tutors are liable to spend more time performing the social and technical roles, and less time performing the narrow pedagogical role (since more interaction happens between students themselves).

The Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Revolutionaries

Notes from episode 1 of a BBC4 series on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group founded in the revolutionary year of 1848 by three young painters from London's Royal Academy - John Everett Millais (1829-96), William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82, the bohemian son of a political refugee from Italy). The group set out to overturn the prevailing dogma of the art establishment ("lazy, predictable and boring"), in particular the rules of composition derived from the renaissance Italian painter Raphael. In doing so, they shocked the London art world, attracting unprecedented levels of negative criticism (for example from Charles Dickens).

The Pre-Raphaelites' early paintings involved the controversial application of a bold new realism to sacred subjects, in an attempt to 'restore meaning to art'.

John Everett Millais' Christ in the House of his Parents (1850):

This painting was painted to shock, deliberately breaking the accepted rules of composition, in particular the 'pyramid structure' copied from Raphael. In addition, there is an audacious, almost blasphemous, realism (wrinkles, dirty toenails, sunburn, protruding veins etc.), which was a complete break with the customary idealistic approach to representing saintly religious figures.

William Holman Hunt's A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Missionary from the Persecution of the Druids (1850):

This painting is modelled like a Roman relief sculpture, with everything foregrounded, rather than the traditional Raphaelite pyramid. The use of apertures to show secondary scenes in the background harks back to 15th century paintings.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Ecce Ancilla Domini! (1850):

This painting portrays the Archangel Gabriel as a 'corporeal', wingless young man (naked under his gown) thrusting a lily stem at Mary's womb, symbolising the moment of the immaculate conception. The accepted rules of perspective are abandoned - the space is 'foreshortened'.

The PRB then moved on to painting insalubrious subjects from modern urban life, fully ten years before the French Impressionists did the same. These often involved the role of women in society, at a time when women outnumbered men.

John Everett Millais' Mariana in the Moated Grange (1851):

This painting is inspired by a poem by Tennyson, and explores women's dependence on marriage. Mariana's dowry has been lost at sea, and she has thus been abandoned by her fiance Angelo, forced into a nunlike existence. An image of lassitude, boredom, ennui, and sexual frustration.

William Holman Hunt's The Awakening Conscience (1853):

This painting explores the role of the kept woman, and the increasing visibility of prostitutes in urban society. One important point is that this is a 'portrait' of a prostitute (modelled by real-life prostitute Annie Miller) rather than a 'caricature'. The back wall has a mirror reflecting the door to the garden, i.e. we are presented with the 'whole view'. Key features are the discarded glove on the floor, the fact that she has just jumped out of his lap as if in sudden realisation of her situation, the cat under the table imitating the pose of the man with respect to a bird trying to escape.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Found (185?):

This painting was modelled by Rossetti's mistress, Fanny Cornforth. It depicts a prostitute at the end of the road, a former country girl laid low by a life of urban vice. A countryman has come up to London to take his calf to market and spots his former sweetheart, who recoils in shame. Key features are the calf trapped under the net, on its way to be slaughtered, and the intertwined hands of the two protagonists.

Although the PRB had achieved their aims of reforming British art, they were still critically damned, and their work didn't sell. But then John Ruskin, the trusted Victorian art critic (and suspected paedophile!) came to their defence, in a supportive letter to the Times. This marked a turning point in the Pre-Raphaelites' fortunes.

Episode 2 here.

Tuesday swimming

60 lengths (1500 yards) in 40 minutes.

How the Celts saved Britain - A New Civilisation

Summary of the first episode of Dan Snow's new history programme How the Celts Saved Britain, where he "blows the lid on the traditional, Anglo-centric view of history and reveals how the Irish saved Britain from cultural oblivion during the Dark Ages".

At the start of the 5th century, the southern part of Britain had been under Roman rule for 300 years. The Roman superpower had brought civilisation to iron-age, pagan Britain - centralised political authority, towns, roads, commerce/trade, money, technology, art, literacy/books, law and christianity. The Roman garrisons protected the Britons from their unruly, uncivilised, pagan, iron-age, tribal, illiterate, uncultured neighbours - the Picts in the north on the other side of Hadrian's Wall, and Irish across the sea to the West.

With the collapse of the Roman Empire and the consequent departure of the Roman legions from Britain, anarchy and lawlessness returned (i.e. the 'Dark Ages'). During the ensuing chaos, a 16 year old British christian boy from the area around the Severn estuary, named Patrick (390-460), son of a deacon and grandson of a priest, was captured by pirates and sold into slavery in pagan Ireland (called by the Romans 'Hibernia', or 'Land of Winter'). For six years, he worked as a shepherd in the west of Ireland, with only his christian religion for comfort. After his escape, he returned to Britain, only to discover that his homeland had changed beyond recognition, and centralised political authority had disappeared completely. Patrick chose to return to Ireland, inspired by a dream to bring the christian faith and civilisation to the pagan Irish.

At the time, the Ireland was still under the influence of the pagan religion that once had held sway over all of western Europe - a religion, presided over by druids, of sacred trees, woods and lakes, of animal and human sacrifice. Patrick set about converting the Irish to christianity, reinterpreting their traditional beliefs in christian terms, in the face of hostility from the native druids. Sacred places were turned into christian alters, traditional festivals were coopted.

Patrick then decided to directly confront both the 'high king' of Ireland, and the chief pagan priests, by lighting a fire at the Hill of Tara during the Beltana festival. The king was so impressed by Patrick's christian message (and presumably by the accompanying gifts of literacy and culture), that he converted. Thus was Patrick's christianisation of Ireland cemented.

Back across the Irish Sea, the British had employed continental Germanic mercenaries (Angles, Saxons, Friesians and Jutes) to protect them from the invading Picts. Unfortunately, the pagan mercenaries decided that they liked the look of Britain and they decided to stay, taking over the land and throwing out the Britons (or forcing them to adopt Anglo-Saxon language and culture). Thus the last vestiges of christianity, literacy and civilisation was forced to the western peripherary of Britain, to Wales and Cornwall.

Meanwhile, christianity had transformed Ireland. Monasteries appeared all over the country, little islands of modernity and technological innovation, built of stone and mortar, with hospitals and libraries. During the sixth century, Irish monasteries were the only places in western Europe where literacy was still practised, and manuscripts were being produced in scriptoria. This social and cultural revolution brought with it new contact between the Irish monasteries and their counterparts in North Africa and the Atlantic seaboard, providing the springboard for the re-christianisation of western Europe. Irish monks went on to found monasteries all over Europe, e.g. Luxeuil (founded 585), Bobbio (founded 614), St Gallen (founded 719). Ireland's monasteries formed the cradle of a new European civilisation, "every bit as great as Rome's".

See also: Hadrian's Wall, Vindolanda fort, the Groans of the Britons, West Stow Anglo-Saxon village, Croagh Patrick, Kevin of Glendalough (498-618), Glendalough Monastery (the 'Monastic City'), Nendrum Monastery, velum, the Stowe Missal.

Episode 2 here.

Old English nouns of relationship (in -r)

	sing	plur
nom	brōðor	brōðor
acc	brōðor	brōðor
gen	brōðor	brōðra
dat	brēðer	brōðrum

	sing	plur
nom	dohtor	dohtor
acc	dohtor	dohtor
gen	dohtor	dohtra
dat	dehter	dohtrum

	sing	plur
nom	sweostor	sweostor/tru/tra
acc	sweostor	sweostor/tru/tra
gen	sweostor	sweostra
dat	sweostor	sweostrum

	sing	plur
nom	fæder	fæd(e)ras
acc	fæder	fæd(e)ras
gen	fæder	fæd(e)ra
dat	fæder	fæderum

	sing	plur
nom	mōdor	mōdra/u
acc	mōdor	mōdra/u
gen	mōdor	mōdra
dat	mēder	mōdrum

Some Old English nouns

form	meaning	gender	declension
fæder	father	masc
fōt	foot	masc
æcer	field	masc
brōðor	brother	masc
duru	door	fem
ġiest	stranger
dæġ	day	masc

Weekend swimming

60 lengths (1500 yards) in 40 minutes.

Haydn music to look for

Farewell Symphony; Quartet op 74 no 3 (also 1 2); Quarter op 71 no 2; Symphony no 100 The Military; Surprise Symphony; Sonata no 62; The Creation - representation of chaos/sunrise/the heavens are telling the glory of god; Symphony no 6 Morning; Divertimento no 47; Gypsy Rondo; Mermaid Song; Scottish folk songs (Auld Lang Syne)

Some unicode character sets (10 bits)

0-127: C0 Controls and Basic Latin

128 characters; hex: 0000-007F; dec: 0-127, i.e. makes full use of 7 bits. Subsets are: (a) C0 controls (0000-001F or 0-31); (b) ASCII punctuation and symbols, including 'space' (0020-002F or 32-47); (c) ASCII digits 0-9 (0030-0039 or 48-57); (d) more ASCII punctuation and symbols (003A-0040 or 58-64); (e) uppercase Latin alphabet A-Z (0041-005A or 65-90); (f) more ASCII punctuation and symbols (005B-0060 or 91-96); (g) lowercase Latin alphabet A-Z (0061-007A or 97-122); (h) more ASCII punctuation and symbols, including control character 'delete' (007B-007F or 123-127).

128-255: C1 controls and Latin-1 Supplement

128 characters; hex 0080-00FF; dec: 128-255, i.e. together with 'CO Controls and Basic Latin', this makes full use of 8 bits. Subsets are: (a) C1 controls (0080-009F or 128-159); (b) Latin-1 punctuation and symbols, mainly mathematical (00A0-00BF or 160-191); (c) letters (00C0-00D6 or 192-214); (d) mathematical operator × (00D7 or 215); (e) more letters (00D8-00F6 or 216-246); (f) mathematical operator ÷ (00F7 or 247); (g) more letters (00F8-00FF or 248-255). The letters are those extra ones needed for writing Western European languages, i.e. uppercase and lowercase accented vowels, ç, ñ, ß, ø, ð, þ, and æ.

256-383: Latin Extended-A

128 characters; hex 0100-017F; dec 256-383, i.e. this makes half-use of the 9th bit. Adds accented Latin vowels and consonants for Eastern European languages, and ones like Finnish, Turkish, Greenlandic etc.

384-591: Latin Extended-B

208 characters; hex 0180-024F; dec 384-591, i.e. this makes full use of the 9th bit (<512) and partial use of the 10th (<1024). Subsets: (a) non-European and historic Latin; (b) African letters for clicks; (c) Croatian digraphs matching Serbian Cyrillic letters; (d) Pinyin diacritic-vowel combinations; (e) phonetic and historic letters; (f) additions for Slovenian and Croatian; (g) additions for Romanian; (h) miscellaneous additions; (i) additions for Livonian; (j) additions for Sinology; (k) miscellaneous additions.

592-687: IPA Extensions

96 characters; hex 0250-02AF; dec 592-687. Additional characters needed for the IPA.

688-767: Spacing Modifier Letters

80 characters; hex 02B0-02FF; dec 688-767.

768-879: Combining Diacritical Marks

112 characters; hex 0300-036F; dec 768-879.

880-1023: Greek and Coptic

144 characters (9 are blank and reserved for future use); hex 0370-03FF; dec 880-1023.

Special Old English characters on the Mac

Make sure you are using the US Extended keyboard layout:

æ	ALT+'
Æ	ALT+SHIFT+'
þ	ALT+t
Þ	ALT+SHIFT+t
ð	ALT+d
Ð	ALT+SHIFT+d
ā	ALT+a a
ē	ALT+a e
...	ALT+a ...
ċ	ALT+w c
ġ	ALT+w g
Ċ	ALT+w C
Ġ	ALT+w G

Thursday swimming

60 lengths (1500 yards) in 40 minutes.

Old English noun declension: strong nouns

Masculine (stone):

	singular	plural
nom	stān	stānas
acc	stān	stānas
gen	stānes	stāna
dat	stāne	stānum

Neuter short (ship):

	singular	plural
nom	scip	scipu
acc	scip	scipu
gen	scipes	scipa
dat	scipe	scipum

Neuter long (word):

	singular	plural
nom	word	word
acc	word	word
gen	wordes	worda
dat	worde	wordum

Feminine short (gift):

	singular	plural
nom	ġiefu [v]	ġiefa
acc	ġiefe	ġiefa
gen	ġiefe	ġiefa
dat	ġiefe	ġiefum

Midweek swimming

60 lengths (1500 yards) in 40 minutes.

Swimming

60 lengths (1500 yards) in 40 minutes.

OpenCCG 'morph.xml' files

A morph.xml file is a list of word-forms and a list of associated macros.

morph @name
  > entry* @word @stem @pos @macros
  > macro* @name
      > fs? @id @attr @val
      > lf?

The 'stem' attribute should be thought of as the semantic predicate (by default it's the same as the value of 'word'). The 'pos' attribute specifies which families are relevant in building the full lexical category. The 'id' attribute make reference to an identifier in the 'lexicon.xml' file.

Simple Old English words (monosyllables)

bed	bɛd	bed
blód	blo:d	blood
God	gɔd	God
land	land	land
nim	nɪm	take
ramm	ram	ram
be	bɛ	by
nan	nan	none/no
tíd	ti:d	time
in	ɪn	in
on	ɔn	on
up	ʊp	up
bin	bɪn	bin
swift	swɪft	swift
gold	gold	gold
grim	grɪm	grim
song	sɔŋg	song
corn	kɔrn	corn
lamb	lamb	lamb
wind	wɪnd	wind
þus	θʊs	thus
far	far	far
eft	ɛft	again/back
self	sɛlf	self
fyr	fyr	fire
sweord	swɛɔrd	sword
cræft	kræft	craft
léof	lɛɔf	dear (sir)
fréo	frɛɔ	free
hé	he:	he
him	hɪm	him
niht	nɪçt	night
hand	hand	hand
þurh	θʊrx	through
ic	ɪtʃ	I
cwæþ	kwæ&theta	said
cild	tʃɪld	child
gad	gad	goad
græg	græj	gray
cniht	knɪçt	boy/servant
betst	bɛtst	best
fisc	fɪʃ	fish
scip	ʃɪp	ship
ecg	ɛdʒ	edge
bricg	brɪdʒ	bridge
secg	sɛdʒ	man

Old English consonants

The following consonants are straightforward:

p [p]	t [t]	k [k]
b [b]	d [d]
m [m]	n [n]
l [l]	r [r]
x [ks]

Fricatives each have two allophones:

f [f/v]

s [s/z]

þ [θ/ð]

ð [θ/ð]

The voiceless allophone appears initially, finally, and adjacent to a voiceless consonant. The voiced allophone appears between two vowels, or between a vowel and a voiced consonant.

The 'h' sounds has three allophones:

h [h/ç/x]

The [h] sound appears initially, [ç] after a front vowel, and [x] after a back vowel.

The sounds 'c' and 'g' have two allophones:

c [tʃ/k]

g [j/g]

The first allophone appears: (a) before a front vowel; and (b) at the end of a word, after a front vowel. The second allophone appears before a back vowel or a consonant.

Some special combinations:

cn [kn]

gn [gn]

sc [ʃ]

cg [dʒ]

Old English vowels

Old English texts contain seven letters which denote vowels. There is evidence that each of these represents two distinct phonemes, one 'short' and one 'long':

majuscule	minuscule	short	long
a	A	a or ɑ	ɑ:
e	E	ɛ or e	e:
i	I	ɪ or i	i:
o	O	ɔ or o	o:
u	U	ʊ or u	u:
y	Y	y	y:
æ	Æ	æ	æ:

Note that there are two different proposed pronunciations for some of the short vowels.

The evidence for phonemic status of vowel length involves the existence of minimal pairs involving homographs like:

written	short reflex	long reflex
ham	ham	home
is	is	ice
rod	rod	rood (i.e. cross)

Because one reading of each homograph underwent a vowel change during the Great Vowel Shift, it is believed that these words were not homophones in Old English. In addition, we can use evidence of vowel shift in Modern English to identify long vowels in Old English.

In modern versions of Old English texts, long vowels are often marked with a macron: ā, ē, ī etc. The original Old English texts often use different glyphs: (a) 'i' without a dot; (b) 'y' with a dot; (c) a version of 'E' that looks a bit like 'C'; (d) sometimes a version of 'a' without the curly bit on top.

There are three digraphs/diphthongs, each of which can be either short or long:

digraph	sound
eo	eo or eʊ
ea	æɑ
ie	ɪ

Note that the digraph 'ie' was probably not pronounced as a diphthong. Long diphthongs/digraphs are conventionally designated by placing a macron above the first letter in the digraph.

Note also that the short vowels 'a', 'æ' and 'ea' are closely related - they evolved out of a single Proto-Germanic vowel 'a' (by phonological conditioning), and evolved back into a single Middle English vowel 'a'. This is important to know to understand certain inflectional paradigms, e.g. 'dæg' vs 'dagas'; 'geat' vs 'gatu'.

Monosyllabic English words with 'ee': A-F

eel
bee
fee
flee
free
knee
beech
beef
been
beep
beer
beet
bleed
bleep
breech
breed
breeze
cheek
cheep
cheer
cheese
deed
deem
deep
deer
feed
feel
freeze

Monosyllabic English words with 'ea': A-M

A * is used when the pronunciations is not /i:/. Generally pronounced /ɛ:/ before the Great Vowel Shift, which rose to /e:/ then /i:/.

each
ear
earl*
earn*
earth*
ease
east
eat
eave

flea

beach
bead
beak
beam
bean
bear*
beard
beast
beat
bleach
bleak
bleat
breach
bread*
breadth*
break*
bream
breast*
breath*
breathe
cease
dead*
deaf*
deal
dean
dear
dearth*
death*
dread*
dream

fear
feast
feat
freak
gear
gleam
glean
grease
great*
head*
heal
health*
heap
hear
heard*
hearse*
heart*
hearth*
heat
heath
heave
jeans
leach
lead[*]
leaf
league
leak
lean
leap
learn*
lease
least
leave
leaves
mead
meal
mean
means
meant*
meat

Others:

feather*
heather*
heaven*
jealous*
leather*
leaven*
meadow*
measure*

The Great Vowel Shift

The long/stressed vowels of Old/Middle English:

front		back
i:		u:
e:		o:
ɛ:		ɔ:
	a:

Typical orthography for these was as follows:

i:	y,i	mine,sight
u:	ou,u	house
e:	ee,e,e_e	sheep, me, mete
o:	oo,o	boot
ɛ:	ea,e	break, beak
ɔ:	oa	loaf
a:	aa,a	name

The Great Vowel Shift involved everything moving up a slot:

• i: -> ai
• u: -> au (unless followed by a labial consonant p/b/m)
• e: -> i:
• o: -> u:
• ɛ: -> e: -> i:
• ɔ: -> o:
• a: -> ɛ: -> e:

opennlp.ccg.lexicon.MacroItem

macro @name
  > fs*
  > lf

private String name;
private FeatureStructure[] featStrucs;
private LF[] preds;

opennlp.ccg.lexicon.MorphItem

This class parses the entry elements in morph.xml files:

entry @word @pos (@stem) (@class) (@coart) (@macros) (@excluded)

There are the following fields:

private Word surfaceWord;
private Word word;
private Word coartIndexingWord;
private String[] macros;
private String[] excluded;
private boolean coart = false;

The constructor is quite complicated. The value of 'macros' and 'excluded' is straightforward - you just split the value up into string tokens (macro names and excluded strings). The value of 'surfaceWord' comes from passing the value of the word attribute through the tokeniser in some strange way:

surfaceWord = Grammar.theGrammar.lexicon.tokenizer.parseToken(e.getAttributeValue("word"),coart);

The value of 'word' is derived as follows:

word = word.createFullWord(surfaceWord, 
                           e.getAttributeValue("stem"), 
                           e.getAttributeValue("pos"), 
                           null, 
                           e.getAttributeValue("class"));

opennlp.ccg.lexicon.DataItem

This class parses member elements inside family elements inside lexicon.xml files:

member @stem (@pred)

The fields and constructor are obvious:

private String stem;
private String pred;
public DataItem(org.jdom.Element e) { ... }

If there is no 'pred' attribute, its value is the same as 'stem'.

opennlp.ccg.lexicon.EntriesItem

This class is used to parse entry elements from inside family elements in lexicon.xml files:

entry @name (@stem) (@active) (@indexRel)
  > category

The fields for this class are:

private String name;
private String stem;
private Boolean active;
private String indexRel;
private Category cat;
private Family family;

The constructor method is obvious too:

public EntriesItem(org.jdom.Element e, Family f) {
    this.family = f;
    ...
    cat = CatReader.getCat((Element) e.getChildren().get(0));
}

If there is no 'stem' attribute, this field gets the value Lexicon.DEFAULT_VAL, i.e. "[*DEFAULT*]". The default value of 'active' is Boolean.TRUE. If there is no 'indexRel' attribute, then the value of this field comes from that of the family. Obviously, the last line is the most interesting - it takes the first child only and converts it into a category? What if there are other children?

There are the usual 'get' methods, as well as a couple that get attributes of the immediate superfamily, as well a toString() method.

opennlp.ccg.lexicon.Family

This class is used to parse XML family elements in OpenCCG lexicon.xml files:

family @name @pos (@closed) (@indexRel) (@coartRel)
  > entry*
  > member*

The fields of a Family object are thus as follows:

private String name;
private String pos;
private Boolean closed; 
private String indexRel;
private String coartRel;
private EntriesItem[] entries;
private DataItem[] data; //members
private String supertag;

The supertag is formed by removing slash modalities and other minor features from a category (i.e. from the family name). There are get and set accessor methods for each field. The constructor method is exactly as you'd think:

public Family(org.jdom.Element e) { ... }

See also: opennlp.ccg.lexicon.EntriesItem and opennlp.ccg.lexicon.DataItem.

opennlp.ccg.lexicon.Lexicon

The constructor method of the opennlp.ccg.grammar.Grammar class contains the following code:

public final Lexicon lexicon;
lexicon = new Lexicon(this);
lexicon.init(lexiconUrl,morphUrl);

Here we turn to the code for the opennlp.ccg.lexicon.Lexicon class. Here are two basic fields and the constructor:

public final Grammar grammar;
public final Tokenizer tokenizer;

public Lexicon(Grammar g) {
    this.grammar = g;
    this.tokenizer = new DefaultTokenizer();
}

The init method starts as follows, where there are two input parameters, lexiconUrl and morphUrl:

List<Family> lexicon = null;
List<MorphItem> morph = null;
List<MacroItem> macroModel = null;
lexicon = getLexicon(lexiconUrl);
Pair<List<MorphItem>,List<MacroItem>> morphInfo = getMorph(morphUrl);
morph = morphInfo.a;
macroModel = morphInfo.b;

See also opennlp.ccg.lexicon.Family, opennlp.ccg.lexicon.MorphItem, and opennlp.ccg.lexicon.MacroItem.

opennlp.ccg.grammar.Types

This class implements the notion of a (multiple inheritance) hierachy of syntactic types. It is called by the constructor method of the opennlp.ccg.grammar.Grammar class, as documented here. Each Grammar object has an instance field types of class Types. The constructor method for Grammar calls one of two constructor methods to initialise this field: (a) new Types(URL u,Grammar g); or (b) new Types(Grammar g).

The code for the Types makes crucial reference to the opennlp.ccg.unify.SimpleType class (which implements the opennlp.ccg.unify.Unifiable interface).

Apart from that, the code is a bit of a mess, so I'm going to ignore these classes for the moment.

opennlp.ccg.grammar.Grammar

This class encodes the notion of a CCG grammar, essentially a lexicon, a set of rules and a type hierarchy. Its constructor is called by the opennlp.ccg.TextCCG class, as discussed here. Here are the essentials (ignoring XSLT files for transforming from and to LFs, pitch accents, special tokenisers, supertags etc.):

public final Types types;
public final Lexicon lexicon;
public final RuleGroup rules;
private String grammarName = null;
public static Grammar theGrammar; //nasty hack!

Here are the basics of the constructor, which takes a single input parameter url, of class java.net.URL:

theGrammar = this;
SAXBuilder builder = new SAXBuilder();
Document doc = builder.build(url);
Element root = doc.getRootElement();
grammarName = root.getAttributeValue("name");
...
Element typesElt = root.getChild("types");
URL typesUrl;
if (typesElt!=null)
    typesUrl = new URL(url,typesElt.getAttributeValue("file"));
else typesUrl = null;
Element lexiconElt = root.getChild("lexicon");
URL lexiconUrl = new URL(url,lexiconElt.getAttributeValue("file"));
Element morphElt = root.getChild("morphology");
URL morphUrl = new URL(url,morphElt.getAttributeValue("file"));
Element rulesElt = root.getChild("rules");
URL rulesUrl = new URL(url,rulesElt.getAttributeValue("file"));
...
if (typesUrl!=null) types = new Types(typesUrl,this);
else types = new Types(this);
lexicon = new Lexicon(this);
lexicon.init(lexiconUrl,morphUrl); *****
rules = new RuleGroup(rulesUrl,this);
...