Wordie: Lexome: Comments

Comment by bilby, 9 months ago

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 20:17:11 +0000

Maybe it is, I've an open mindome.

Comment by skipvia, 9 months ago

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 20:07:37 +0000

Bilby--who's to say that lexome isn't evolving right before your eyes? Do we have to wait for "someone else" to come up with a word for a concept that many Wordies seem to find compelling now?

Comment by adoarns, 9 months ago

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 19:02:47 +0000

Sionnach: I'll put you down as a misomist. :-)

Comment by mollusque, 9 months ago

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 16:01:59 +0000

But lexome is art! Look at the reactions it's provoking. :-)

Comment by uselessness, 10 months ago

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 15:06:40 +0000

I don't have an opinion on the word itself (it's unabashed meh) but I'm not really a fan of approaching language as a science. It is most certainly an art, and should stay that way. :-)

Comment by bilby, 10 months ago

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 11:41:31 +0000

I'm no -ome fan either and my interest in neologisms prefers the ridiculous over the calculated. If they pretend seriousness they should be allowed to evolve in a kind of organic way. When there's a burning need for a word like lexome to enable people interested in the concept to discuss it, then we'll have it, ie. it's the concept or referent that defines what 'clothes' it should wear.

Comment by sionnach, 10 months ago

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:47:16 +0000

I'll just don my grouch hat here and register my loathing for the vast majority of these 'ome' and 'omics' neologisms. They have been proliferating through the biological sciences at an alarming rate over the last decade. In a few cases (genome, proteomics), the meaning is clear and well-defined; however, many of the new coinages are vague and ill-defined* and give the distinct impression of being the result of a bandwagon effect. Left to their own devices, academic types will churn out grant proposals, and will find it hard to resist the trendlet du jour. And what could be simpler than just adding the currently fashionable suffix 'ome' to convey the impression of being au courant, right out there on the bleeding edge of interdisciplinary research? Sprinkle your proposal with a few references to the promise of 'technology' applied to huge databases - essentially an appeal to the power of wishful thinking, and sit back and wait for that grant money to come rolling in.

The fact that most of these new coinages lack any sort of clear definition, or that data mining is a poor substitute for clear thinking, doesn't appear to bother a lot of folks. But it bothers me. Before lexome gets my vote, I would need to see some evidence that it is more than a mere bandwagon coinage whose precise meaning remains regrettably fuzzy.

Or, to put it more concisely, bah humbug!

*: e.g. spliceosome, interactome, lipidomics, kinome, textomics, speechome, reactome, and - my personal favorite - omeomics.

Comment by skipvia, 10 months ago

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 07:26:19 +0000

Sounds like we need a lexome wiki...

Comment by Minerva, 10 months ago

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 06:35:51 +0000

This is the beauty of Wordie, that lexome was born here. Start writing that article, adoarns!

Comment by adoarns, 10 months ago

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 06:23:50 +0000

WOTY...nice!

May I also say--in the same way the sequencing of the genome was in fact just the beginning of a much larger project, understanding the human lexome will eventually require...an immensely larger project.

And since humans have only 23,000 or so genes, whereas the number of words probably reaches into the hundreds of millions, we're talking—well—long-term grant proposals at best.

Comment by skipvia, 10 months ago

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 05:52:52 +0000

Ummm...ditto!

Thinking about words and language(s) in a biological context is very compelling and makes perfect sense to me.

And I love the idea that words have mating rituals. It's certainly evident here on Wordie.

Comment by mollusque, 10 months ago

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 04:12:49 +0000

I've nominated lexome for Wordie Word of the Year (woty07). Much as I like lexisphere (where this thread started), lexome is more powerful.

I asked whether a lexome was the vocabulary of an individual, a language, or a species, but it is most illuminating at the species level. The human lexome encompasses all words in all human languages. Someday SETI may discover alien lexomes. Maybe blue whales have their own lexome.

Just as genetic technology enhances our knowledge of the human genome, Internet technology enhances our knowledge of the human lexome. In the next ten years, most of human knowledge will come online. We can now study words in the field and observe their origins, nuances, mating rituals and evolution, where before we relied on dictionaries to determine existence and meanings.

Even as technology reveals the unimagined scope of the lexome, languages and words are going extinct at unprecedented rates, as are species and genes. Just as invasive species and monoculture crop species displace untold diversity, a few dominant languages and cultures impoverish our linguistic word. We must use genomics and lexomics to fight extinction.

Comment by skipvia, 10 months ago

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:55:40 +0000

Wonderful!

Comment by adoarns, 10 months ago

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:23:15 +0000

The set of all possible words. By analogy with genome and proteome of biology.