University of Aizu, Graduation Thesis. March, 2003

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Development of English Word-Study Tool with theIndo-European RootsTakumi Sekikawa
Abstract

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An English word-study method using Indo-Europeanroot information is better that other conventional methods. Actually, the user of the Hyper-dictionary requested
something that English word-studying support tool, atype of quiz for English word-study support tool using Indo-European-Roots information is developed asa web-application. The main purpose of this thesis isto develop a method of studying English using IndoEuropean Root information. By developing this webapplication, it is expected that this method of studying
English using Indo-European Root information will become a more general method in the future.

1 Introduction
1.1 Background
English education is very important in Japan, as English
is a required subject in Japanese junior and senior highschools. Nowadays, the global standard for language
education has progressed in Japan, and many English
schools have opened with the number of students enrolled on the rise. English classes for small children(3-5 years old) in English schools, in particular, haveincreased. A plan to carry out English education forkindergarten and elementary school students is considered by educating English specialists.
To better understand English words and sentences, it isnecessary for Japanese learners to increase their English
vocabulary. When learning English words, studying English which uses Indo-European-Roots is more eﬃcientthan other learning methods. We explain this fully in thenext section.

1.2 About Indo-European-Roots
1.2.1 What is Indo-European-Roots?
An Indo-European root is a type of parent language thatassumes that English, the languages of almost the entire
Europe continent, the Iraian language of Asia, Indian,etc. originated from one single parent language. For
example, the most primitive form of the English word”early” is ”ayer,” or ”early” can be derived from the root”ayer”. When ”early” is searched in a Hyper-dictionary,
the following result is displayed [see Figure 1].

Supervised by Nobuyoshi Asai

Figure 1: earlyProto-Indo-European, which is the ancestor language of
Indo-European languages, is not a natural language thatexisted as an actual language.
In previous research it was proved that 70 to 80 %of modern English words have Indo-European-Roots.
Proto-Indo-European is a virtual language. It wascreated by comparative linguistics which developed
rapidly in Europe from the 19th century. Theoretical re-construction follows the regular phono-rhythmicchanges found in Indo-Europeans languages. Now, research has focused on discovering the social system ofpeople who used Indo-European-Roots[1].
Proto-Indo-European existed from West Asia to Europe
about 7,000 years ago. Proto-Indo-European’s stem
was structured a patterns groups called Indo-EuropeanRoots[1]. There are 12 groups of Indo-European-Rootderivatives. They include Anatolian, Indo-Iranian, Greek(Hellenic), Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Armenian, Tocharian, Balto-Slavic, Albanian, and other Branches. The
population of people using Indo-European-Roots occupies half of world of people groups forming the mostimportant groups, and these groups include about 70 languages[1].
1.2.2 Usable of Indo-European-Roots
Characters in the Roman alphabet have no meanings ashieroglyphs do in Chinese characters. There is almost
no specific role in English for an ideograph like a Chinese character or a hieroglyph, etc. Even if the row of acharacter is perceived, it is diﬃcult to clarify the origin

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University of Aizu, Graduation Thesis. March, 2003

2In order to help Japanese students of English, the hyper dictionary includes Prefix data and stem data in theEnglish word data. Prefixes and stems judged to be important are classified by referencing the American Heritage Dictionary third edition (AHD). So it can classify
languages that have the same Indo-European-Roots anddiﬀerent prefixes. It can also classify some words that donot have Indo-European-Roots.
Research in this English-Japanese hyper dictionary uses
596 kinds of Indo-European-Roots as classified in theAmerican Heritage Dictionary (AHD), which is one of
the most commonly used English dictionaries in theUnited States.
1.3.2 Function of English-Japanese Hyper dictionary
Functions of the hyper-dictionary include the following:
Figure 2: Proto-Indo-Europeanof the meaning of a word. But the English-word learning method using an Indo-European-Roots, informationbased hyper dictionary is an eﬀective learning method
compared to using only a typical English dictionary orwordbook. English education has changed from ”memory” method to ”learning” study method[2].

1.3 About the English-Japanese HyperDictionary
1.3.1 Characteristics of the English-Japanese Hyper Dictionary
The ”English-Japanese Hyper dictionary” was createdusing Indo-European-Roots information which can befound on the World Wide Web. It was, producedby Ikebe of the CAI Laboratory at the University ofTsukuba and other graduates of the Mathematical Foundation of Computer Science Laboratory of University of
Aizu in 2001. This dictionary is superior to a typical dictionary and has the following important characteristics:• It can be used by anyone, everywhere, at anytimeon the World Wide Web.
• It has a simple database, so it is easy to add, delete,and update data.
• All English words having the same Indo-EuropeanRoots can be learned.

• English words can be accessed from the front wordconcordance.
• Indo-European-Roots can be accessed from thefront word concordance.
• Middle change words can be accessed from thefront word concordance.
• Synonym lists.
• Indo-European-Root lists.
• Prefix lists.
• Stem lists.

2 Discussion
2.1 Purpose of this research
There was no English-Japanese web dictionary using
Indo-European-Roots until now, but I do not know about
Indo-European-Root. While studying Indo-EuropeanRoots, I used an Indo-European-Root based EnglishJapanese hyper dictionary. As stated in section [1.2.2],
one can learn English words eﬃciently by using IndoEuropean-roots. But there is no English learning webapplication using Indo-European-Roots, so research tolearn English web application using Indo-EuropeanRoots is needed.

2.2 About using some technology for research• It displays various meanings of a synonym, andcontrasts them with an antonym by going back toby Indo-European-Roots.

The technology of this Web-application is introducednext.

University of Aizu, Graduation Thesis. March, 2003

OS
Java Environment
Servlet Container
RDB Server
JDBC Drivers1070131

3RedHat 7.3J
J2SDK 1.4.1-01
Tomcat 4.0.6
MySQL 3.23.49
mm.mysql

section. First, this web-application has the following
functions:

Table 1: Technology of web-application.

2. Question is displayed in 1-5 textboxes (2-1) and English words for a hint (2-2), and it displays somemeans (2-3).

2.2.1 About sevlet
Servlet is one type of the ServerSide Java technology
and has the same ability as Common Gateway Interface(CGI). First, Servlet reads data from the form tagsof a web page or Java applet. It is possible to learn about
a browser’s ability and type, information about cookies,
as well as client user data. Second, the Servlet processes these data. The result is created by HTML. Finally, Servlet sends HTML to the client and the result isshown in the browser.
2.2.2 About JSP
Using Servlet, HTML must be written in source code, sothe programmer has to compile all source code if he/shewants to slightly change the HTML code. In order tomake up for the Sevlet’s weak points, JSP was created.
JSP has the following characteristics:• Using JSP with Servlet, a programmer can use both
static and dynamic HTML.
• JSP is basically written in HTML. Java source codeis written in tags called Scriptlet.
• If JSP is called by Servlet, the source is compiled.
Then, JSP obtains the data and creates HTML.
2.2.3 About MySQLMySQL is a free Relational DataBase (RDB) server, thathas a simple function. The search speed of MySQL is thefaster than that of any other RDB server. MySQL adopts
GNU General Public License.
2.2.4 About JDBCJDBC (Java database Connectivity) is developed byJavaSoft.com. It is necessary for connecting MySQL,
JSP and Servlet. API (Application Program Interface)can be used regardless of the kind of database in Java,and it is JDBC.

2.3 About web-application and purpose
2.3.1 Function of this web-application
We next explain the English word-study support tool using Indo-European-Roots information its function in this

1. An Indo-European-Root is selected from 1,348
roots and a question is made automatically from it.

3. This web-application user answers the question using examples from English words for hint (2-2) andsome means (2-3), and moves to the next question.
4. After the user answers the question, it displays asuﬃcient answer (4-1) and a score (4-2). The user
can check the suﬃcient answer (4-1) and score (42).
This function enables students to learn English more eﬃciently [Figure 3 & 4]. This web-application is evaluatedby users highly, and the this learning method will be usedwidely. It is one of the purposes.
2.3.2 Characteristic of web-application
This web-application uses the database of the Hyperdictionary, so if information of Hyper-dictionary is upgraded, the web-application is upgraded together.
But the original database for Hyper-dictionary has thefollowing adverse eﬀects:
1. There are no English words that can be randomly
and automatically selected from Indo-European
Roots of 1,358 roots in the hyper-dictionary
database.
2. The Hyper-dictionary database has English words
which have no meaning.
3. This web-application programs cannot discriminate
when an English word has more than two meanings
in the database of the hyper-dictionary.
In the case of 1 and 2, it is a problem for this webapplication and hyper-dictionary too, these words were
dropped from this web-application, so this trouble wassolved. Case 3 is explained with following example.
”fan” is entered in the database of the hyper-dictionary.
This a database, when ”fan (1)” became a question in
the web-application, ”fan (1)” is the correct answer in
textbox, but when ”fan” is the wrong answer, it is cut”(1)” or ”(2)” in this web-application, and it is solved.

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University of Aizu, Graduation Thesis. March, 2003

Spellfan(1)
fan(2)

4

Mean
扇風機
ファン, 〜狂Table 2: fan

3 Conclusion
By developing a web-application, we learned programming technique of java and JSP, usability of a IndoEuropean-Root, and the making and design of webapplication for this web-application users, and configuration of this web-application systems, etc.
By using the database of the Hyper-dictionary in webapplication development, we could better understand thedesign of this database, its characteristic, and some issue
points.

References[1] C.Watkins,”The American Heritage Dictionaryof Indo-European Roots SECOND EDITION”,
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY, 2000
Figure 3: Exam page[2] Y.Ikebe,”Indo-European-Rootsbased English-Japanese hyper
http://mfntsv1/hidic/informationdictionary”,[3] H.Tanaka,”Hajimete no JSP & Servlet”, SOFT
BANK, 2001
[4] J.O’Neil,”Teach Yourself Java”, SHOEISYA, 1999
[5] S.Lee,”Information of Indo-European roots”,
http://home.att.ne.jp/iota/gogenkenkyu/newpage1.htm,(current Dec.2002)[6] HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY, ”The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
FOURTH EDITION”, 2000
[7] SANSEIDO HENSYUJYO, ”GRAND CONCISEENGLISH-JAPANESE DICTIONARY First Edition,Sanseido Co.,Ltd., 2001
[8] S.FIELD, Screenplay THE Foundations of Screenwriting Expanded Edition Third Edition, Bantam
Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1984

Figure 4: Answer page[9] Y.Matsuo, Hyper English Word Study Dictionary
with Indo-European Roots, University of Aizu,Graduation Thesis. Mar, 2003

University of Aizu, Graduation Thesis. March, 2003[10] Y.Horikawa, Hyper English Word Study Dictionary
with Indo-European Roots and Interim Transitional
Words, University of Aizu, Graduation Thesis. Mar,2003[11] Y.Ichijo, A Case Study of Server Side Java Programming: A Shopping Site and Inventory Management System, University of Aizu, Graduation Thesis.
Mar, 2002[12] H.Sugiura, Upgrading the English-JapaneseHyper-Dictionary, University of Aizu, Graduation
Thesis. Mar, 2002
[13] C.Yamanaka, Synonym Usage viewed from PreHistoric Roots, University of Aizu, Graduation Thesis. Mar, 2002
[14] K.Miyata, Improving Portability and Usabilityof the Indo-european-Root-Based English-JapaneseHyper-Dictionary, University of Aizu, Graduation
Thesis. Mar, 2002[15] Y.Hoshino, Upgrading the Indo-European-RootBased Hyper EnglishDictionary, University of Aizu,
Graduation Thesis. Mar, 2002

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