University of Aizu, Graduation Thesis. Mar, 2002

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Improving Portability and Usability of the IndoEuropean-Root-Based English-Japanese Hyper Dictionary
Kumi Miyata
Abstract

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Proto-Indo-European is considered to be the ancestor
language of Indo-European languages. Most IndoEuropean languages inherited their meanings fromProto-Indo-European. Indo-European-Roots were structured with some stem patterns groups of Proto-IndoEuropean. In previous research, it was proved that 7080 percent of the modern English words have IndoEuropean-Roots. The modern plural English words
come from singular Indo-European-Roots, so IndoEuropean-Roots are useful for learning the vocabularies.
For example, it’s possible to consider some modern English words as one common nuance. Each synonym has adiﬀerent Indo-European-Root, so the learner can use theword in the right way. The first edition of Hyper Dictionary which allowed searching Indo-European-Roots was
finished, and it is running [1].
The first edition has some problems (see 1.3.1): The
stems and the prefixes could be listed, but they could
not be searched. Words which contain the symbol, #,could not be searched. If the quantity of a word information was immensely large, the system outputs an error message. In this research, we improved the first edition using Servlets and JavaServer Pages a kind of Java
technology. The second edition can be made at low costand high portability using Java. The database server is
MySQL which is free and speedy. Indo-European-Roots
have some particular expressions which cannot be dealt
with by a computer. In the first edition, these words were
replaced with another expression like #e, $i. These expressions are replaced by images in second edition.

1 Introduction
1.1 About Indo-European-Roots
Proto-Indo-European which is the ancestor language of
Indo-European languages, is an unreal language, but
is supposed to be one language group existing from7000 years ago to about 5000-6000 years ago. It iscalled Indo-European-Roots that was structured by somestem patterns groups of Proto-Indo-European. This
language’s derivatives are about 12 linguistic fami-

Supervised by Prof. Yasushi Kikuchi

lies; GERMANIC, CELTIC, ITALIC, INDO-IRANIA,BALTO-SLAVIC, and so on. The population using IndoEuropean-Roots occupies half of world, and forms themost important family. This family has about 70 languages.
William Jones, an Indian scholar and lawyer, was interested in the ancient language SANSKRIT during his administration of India in 1786. He found a marked similarity between SANSKRIT and GREEK and LATIN,classical European languages. Indo-European-Roots
started when he presented a hypothesis that these languages specialized from common source, and later GOHTO, CELTIC, ancient PERSIAN were added to thisfamily.
In previous research, it was proved that 70-80 percent of the modern English words have Indo-EuropeanRoots. The Indo-European-Roots family and characteristics were clarify by Indo-European languages comparative linguistics. Now, research is moving to discover
the social system of the people who used Indo-EuropeanRoots.
1.1.1 The Reasons For Observing the IndoEuropean-Roots
The Method of studying Indo-European-Roots is useful in vocabulary training. For instance, hero is often
seen in cinemas and novels. Hero: “someone who isadmired for doing something very brave or good, someone, especially a man or boy, who is the main character of a book, play or movie” in dictionary. According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English
Language (AHD) [5], hero’s Indo-European-Root is ser. According to The American Heritage Dictionary of
Indo-European-Roots SECOND EDITION [4],ser-: To protect
This words correspond these modern English [10];conserve: to prevent something from being wasted,damaged, or destroyed.
observe: to watch someone or something carefully.

University of Aizu, Graduation Thesis. Mar, 2002

preserve: to keep something or someone from being
harmed, destroyed, or changed too much.
reserve: an amount of something that is kept to be
used in the future when it may be needed.
reservoir: a special lake where water is stored to
be used by people in the city.
hero: someone who is admired for doing something
very brave or good.
hero is a “protector”.
Conserve’s prefix con-, which was derived from IndoEuropean-Root kom, means “communal, common.”Conserve’s stem is serve, which comes from ser-, means“to protect.” Conserve comes from “to protect together.”
Observe’s prefix ob-, which was derived from IndoEuropean-Root epi and wer-, means “reverse, to turn toward.” Observe’s stem is serve. Observe comes from “toprotect against.”
Preserve’s prefix pre, which was derived from IndoEuropean-Root per, means “fast, forward, precede,
spare.” Preserve’s stem is serve. Preserve’s meaning“to keep” comes from “to protect the spare.”Reserve’s prefix re-, which was derived from IndoEuropean-Root re-, means “second, newly, backward.”
Reserve’s stem is serve. Reserve comes from “keep inthe back, protect back”.
These words are joined by -ser’s meaning, “to protect.”

The Indo-European-Roots are useful for distinguishwords. Rage and angry have similarly meanings, forexample. This problem can be solved using IndoEuropean-Roots. According to the AHD, the IndoEuropean-Root for anger is angh- and rage is rebh-.
angh-: Tight, painfully, constricted, painfula piece of dead skin that has become
loose near the bottom to your fingernail.
hangnail: a piece of dead skin that has become
loosenear the bottom to your fingernail
anger: a strong feeling of wanting to hurt or
criticize someone because he has done
something bad to you or been unkind toyou.
angst: strong feelings of anxiety and sadness
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because you are worried about your life.
anxious: very worried about something, or showing
to hat you are worried.
anguish: very great pain or worry.
quinsy: tonsillitis.
angina: strep throat.
Angina, quinsy, agnail, hangnail, anguish come from“tight, painfully”, angst, anxious come from “painfulmind”. Then, anger means “anger to the torment, or
painfully constrict your body.” On the other hand,rebh-: violent, impetuous
rabid: suﬀering from rabies.
rabies: a disease that kills animals and people
that are bitten by an infected animal.
rage: strong feeling of anger that you cannot control
Rage is “(bitterly, violently) fly into a fury” from thesewords. This shows why road rage “driver flares on theroad and drives recklessly” and air rage “passenger flareon the airplane and fly into a fury” cannot be expressedas road anger, air anger. The diﬀerence between anger
and rage was distinguished in this way [6].

1.2 About the Hyper Dictionary
1.2.1 What Is a Hyper Dictionary
In recent years, the information oriented society is popularizing rapidly, so common people can use the Internet
easily. The number of useful Internet contents is increasing, so daily life is becoming more and more convenient.
In addition, people can shop and get data from databases
at home. It is possible for us to look up with the dictionary not only on paper but also on the Internet. We callthe dictionary which makes use of the merit of Hyper
Text Markup Language (HTML) a Hyper dictionary.
1.2.2 The Reasons for Making Dictionary of IndoEuropean-Roots not Using the Paper but Using the Internet
The greatest advantage of a Hyper Dictionary is speed
in looking up words. If using Indo-European-Roots, thequantity of information increases, but the Hyper Dictionary system is unlimited virtually. In addition, it is possible to update quickly if information becomes old if using
the Hyper Dictionary. A Hyper Dictionary can come up
to these needs.

1.3 About the First Edition of the Hyper
Dictionary
The first edition has the following features.

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Figure 2: Particular Character

1.4 The Purposes of this Research
Figure 1: The First Edition
A A space to search for English words or IndoEuropean Roots (forward agreement).
B A space of for search results. This space shows candidates for applicable keywords.
C This space shows keywords and meanings.
D The words which have the same Indo-EuropeanRoots.
E An explanation about Proto-Indo-European and IndoEuropean Roots, a list of synonyms, a list of IndoEuropean-Roots, a list of prefixes, and a list of
stems. If you want to see these, click this image.
1.3.1 The Problems of the First Edition
The first edition had the following problems.

The purposes of this research are to fix the problems andto improve on the first edition. It should make it low
cost and high portability for distributing in the future.
The means which were selected to fulfill these conditions are Servlet and JavaServer Pages (JSP). These areJava technology. Java is a programming language. It wasdeveloped by SUN, and it isn’t platform dependent. Using Servlet and JSP, the second edition can be managed
more usefully and easily than first edition. The Relational DataBase (RDB) server for saving the informationof words is MySQL. JDBC is used to access MySQL
server from the Servlet. Servlet Container which is theenvironment for Servlet and JSP is Tomcat3.2.3.
OSJava Environment
Servlet Container
RDB Server
JDBC Driver
JDBC Driver type

Windows2000
JSDK1.3.1
Tomcat3.2.3
MySQL3.23.28
mmmysql
Type4

1. The stems and prefixes could be listed, but they
could not be searched.

2 About Servlet, JSP, and MySQL

2. Words which contain the symbol, #, could not besearched.

This section explains how the second edition was developed and why this method was selected.

3. If the quantity of the word’s information immensely
large, the system outputs an error message.

2.0.1 About Servlet

1.3.2 In Order to Make the First Edition more UsefulIndo-European-Roots have some particular expressions.
A computer cannot deal with these words. In the firstedition, these words were replaced with another expression like #e, $i, and so on. In second edition, in the caseof particular expressions were replaced by images. In addition, the second edition outputs not only words whichhave the same Indo-European-Roots, the stems and theprefixes but also the word’s meanings in order to compare each derivative easily.

Servlet is one of the ServerSide Java technology, and has
the same ability Common Gateway Interface (CGI). At
first, Servlet reads the data from form tags of a web pageor from a Java applet. It is possible to get the browser’s
ability and kind, information about cockies, and client
user data. Second, Servlet processes these data. The results are created by HTML. Finally, Servlet sends HTMLto the client, and the result is showed on browser.
2.0.2 About JSP
Using Servlet, HTML must be written in source code, so
the programmer has to compile all source code if he want
to change HTML a little. JSP is made to this Servlet’sUniversity of Aizu, Graduation Thesis. Mar, 2002

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Figure 3: The Second Edition

Java is platform independent, so Servlet can be useson all web server.

weak point. JSP has the following characteristics:

2. Security
CGI uses functions depending on OS, so a programmer must pay attention to back quotes, semicolons,and so on. Even now, the famous library of CGI has
bugs.

• Using JSP with Servlet, a programmer can use bothof static and dynamic HTML.
• JSP is written in HTML basically. Java source code
are written in tags which are called Scriptlet.
• If JSP is called by Servlet, the source is compiled.
Then, JSP get the data and create HTML.
2.0.3 Why it is not CGI but Servlet and JSP
Servlet has great advantages;
1. Portability

Most CGI are compiled by languages which don’t
check the border of array or strings. If an array’s
max number of elements is 100, the programmer
can write the 105th element even if it is a used memory.
3. Using Servlet and JSP, a program can be divided
into a design area and a logic area. For instance,
Servlet is in charge of a logic, and JSP is in chargeof design. However, designer and programmer canuse their ability.

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2.0.4 About MySQL

s10611485MySQL is a free RDB server. MySQL’s function is simple but its search speed is faster than any other RDB
server. MySQL adopts GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE.

The particular expressions were replaced by images(see E in Figure3), so the user can see the accurate
representation of Indo-European-Roots. Now, the second edition shows not only the word’s name but also its
meanings in order to confirm diﬀerences or similarity of
meaning all at once (see G in Figure3).

2.0.5 About JDBC

3.1.3 Future WorkJDBC, which was developed by JavaSoft, is a tool to access RDB from Java program. JDBC is a trademark, so
it isn’t an abbreviation. First, JDBC accesses the RDB.
Then, it sends SQL sentences to RDB and gets the results.

The particular expressions were replaced by images (seeE in Figure3), so the user can see the accurate representation of Indo-European-Roots. The user can resize theword’s size with browser setting, but the size of images
cannot change. In the future, it is a goal that both words
and images sizes can be changed in the same time.

3 Research Contents
3.1 About the Second Edition
This section explains about the second edition in detail.
3.1.1 The Second Edition’s Functions
The functions illustrated in Figure 3 and listed bellow:
A The User can choose the kind of word what he want
to search.
B The list button.
C The space for the search keyword.
D The search button and the reset button. If the user
clicks the search button, the system searches for the
keyword. If the user wants search space to be reset,
he clicks reset button.
E The search results space. This space lists candidate
for applicable keywords.
F This space shows the word name and its meanings.
G This space shows words and meanings which havethe same Indo-European-Roots.
3.1.2 Solved Problems
The problems in 1.3.1 were all solved.
1: Using checkbox, the second edition can change thekind of word.

4 Conclusion
In this research, problems of the first edition (see 1.3.1)
were all solved. The second edition can be searched by
English word, Indo-European-Root, stem, or prefix. The
accurate representation shows by image. Now, the second edition has became more useful and user friendly.

5 Acknowledgment
In this research, I have be given many things from many
people. Professor Yasuhiko Ikebe helped me thinking
about scientific English. Professors Nobuyoshi Asai, Yasushi Kikuchi taught me very deeply about the procedureof this study and structure of this paper. Graduate students gave me many technical advice. Under graduatesgave me encouragement. I was able to finish with their
help. I want to use this space to say thank you.

References[1] Y. Ikebe,“Hyper Dictionary for English
Word
Study”,
http://mfntsv1.uaizu.ac.jp:8080/hidic/hdhome.htm.
[2] M. Agnes, “Webster’s New World Collegiate Dictionary Forth Edition”, IDG Books Worldwide Ink,
1999.
[3] Y. Terasawa, “The Kenkyusha Dictionary Of
English Etymology”, IDG Kenkyusha, 1997
(Japanese).

2: It can search the words which contains the symbol,#.

[4] C. Watkins, “The American Heritage Dictionaryof Indo-European-Roots SECOND EDITION”,
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY, 2000.

3: The second edition can output words which could
not output by first edition.

[5] “The American Heritage Dictionary Forth Edition”, Houghton Miﬄin Company, 2000.

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[6] Y. Ikebe, “The Construction of Hyper Dictionary
Database For The Study Of English Words Second
Edition”, International Symposium on the East andWest Language Cultures, July 25-27, 2001
[7] Y. Harada, “JAVA Server Side Programming”,
Gijutsi-Hyoron-Sha, 2001 (Japanese).
[8] H. Tanaka, “Hajimete-no JSP & Servlet”, SOFT
BANK, 2001 (Japanese).
[9] M. Tomita, “MySQL Tettei-Nyumon”, Shoei-Sha,
2001 (Japanese).
[10] ”LONGMAN DICTIONARY of AMERICAN ENGLISH”, Obunsha, 1997.

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