2. METHODOLOGY DIRECTED TO SHARE THE
CULTURES STARTING FROM ITS LEXICONS
• In texts words are related ones to others.
These lexical relations form a semantic
conceptual network.
• Every culture has its own semantic conceptual
network.
• The networks share many concepts.
• Each of these concepts is a link, a bridge
between two or more networks.
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3. THE SEMANTIC NETWORKS ARE
CULTURAL ONES
• A dictionary contains cultural information that
usually pass unnoticed to the reader.
• A definition seemingly so elemental as ‘ tejado’
(roof) = “covering of a building covered with
‘tejas’ (tiles)” seems very strange to the persons
who live in cultures in which the buildings have
‘tejados‘ (roofs) of branches, of leaves, of palms,
of corrugated iron, of flat roofs, etc .. and that
even do not know what a ‘teja’ (tile) is.
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4. BUILDING A SEMANTIC CONCEPTUAL
NETWORK (1)
• Every definition explains only one concept.
• We represent every concept with a sign. We
organize the signs making up the semantic
network of the culture to which they belong.
• The network contains lexical concepts of
traditional type, like the ones that appear in
the definition of ‘tejado’ (roof): ‘covering‘,
‘building‘, ‘to cover’, ‘tiles’.
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5. BUILDING A SEMANTIC CONCEPTUAL
NETWORK (2)
• It also contains encyclopedic concepts.
For example the definitions of
‘quijotesco’ (quixotic) and ‘quijote‘ in a
Castilian dictionary allude to the
personage of Cervantes, that's why
Cervantes and Don Quijote appear in the
semantic conceptual Castilian network.
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6. BUILDING A SEMANTIC CONCEPTUAL
NETWORK (3)
• There are other types of concepts that
belong specifically to the Castilian
culture (and, possibly, to other
cultures).
• Definition of ‘to work’ (Marie Moliner):
"To make with effort a continued
physical or intellectual activity: You
need to work to live ”.
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7. BUILDING A SEMANTIC CONCEPTUAL
NETWORK (4)
• We associate the concept ‘to work’ to the concepts ‘to
make’, ‘physical activity‘, ‘intellectual activity’,
‘continued’, ‘effort’.
• AND ALSO … In the example of the definition (“It is
necessary to work to live”) it is clearly seen that the
concept of 'to work' at the Castilian culture is
associated to ‘inexcusable obligation’ = ‘ you must
work to (be able to) live and it is not possible to pass by
without doing it’, which can be a cultural persistent
echo of the Biblical curse “you will gain your bread with
the sweat from your front”.
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8. IT IS A SEMANTIC CONCEPTUAL
NETWORK
• In the Anglo-Saxon culture the concept ‘to
work‘ is associated to ‘personal achievement’
and ‘desirable and licit enrichment’ what
contrasts dramatically with the Spanish proverb
‘who works eats the straw (not the grain)’ =
‘who works is silly / the one that does not work
(and is able to live) is clever’.
• Are there other cultures in which the concept
'to work' is associated to ‘inexcusable
obligation’?
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9. The double representation of the linguistic sign (1)
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caballo
horse
cheval
Pferd
cavallo
cavaloSix languages:
Spanish
English
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
The enlargement has no limit. It will always keep on being A linguistic Macrosign
10. The double representation of the linguistic sign (2)
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‘n’
caballo
cheval
horse
Pferd
cavallo
cavalo
z
A linguistic MACROsign
The FIRST ‘n’ representations
12. THE CONCEPTUAL VARIABLE, LIVING NUCLEUS
AND SEED OF THE ZIRANO PLATFORM (1)
• In the Platform, with the sign 'ZYXW10' we represent
the concept represented by the words 'fille', 'filla',
'daughter', 'fille', ‘Tochter‘, 'figlia', 'filha', etc.
• That's why we say that the sign 'ZYXW10' is a
conceptual variable, because with it we represent all
the values that it has at present in the languages of
our Platform ... and those that will have in the future,
theoretically so many as languages in the Universe in
which the concepts ‘mother‘ and ‘daughter‘ exist.
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13. THE CONCEPTUAL VARIABLE, LIVING NUCLEUS
AND SEED OF THE ZIRANO PLATFORM (2)
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Every sign is unique and it represents to only one concept.
This allows the multiple simultaneous automatic
translation. hija
daughter
Tochter
figlia
filha
daughter Sign ZYXW10
When you write the word ‘daughter‘ in the window of
consultation what the computer looks for is not the
sequence 'd-a-u-g-h-t-e-r' but the sign 'ZYXW10'
14. CONCEPTUAL VARIABLE. CONSULTATION IN SEMANTIC
CONCEPTUAL NETWORKS OF LANGUAGES / CULTURES
IGNORED BY THE CONSULTER (1)
• This allows to a person who speaks only Spanish
to do a consultation by writing a word in his o her
language and to read immediately in Spanish the
concepts associated in all the cultures of the
Platform, without needing to know the consulted
languages.
• In this way, the conceptual variables play its most
sublime role, they are bridges between the
cultures and the languages that form the
Intercultural Multilanguage Zirano Platform.
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15. CONCEPTUAL VARIABLE. CONSULTATION IN SEMANTIC
CONCEPTUAL NETWORKS OF LANGUAGES / CULTURES
IGNORED BY THE CONSULTER (2)
• So, for example, people who consult the concept 'ZYXW10'
from their own language (‘daughter‘), although they do not
know the small romance language called Aragonese that is
spoken in the Pyrenees of Aragon, in the north of Spain,
will be able to know that, according to the norms of the
Aragonese culture, to the death of her parents, the elder
daughter of a family will inherit the whole familiar ranch,
although there are more sisters in the family, only on the
condition that there is no brother. If it would be, although
he would be a baby, he would be the universal heir.
• Disquieting questions begin to arise. Are there other
cultures where the elder son is the universal heir?. Do
matriarchies exist where the heredity follows the feminine
line?.
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16. CONCEPTUAL VARIABLE. CONSULTATION IN SEMANTIC
CONCEPTUAL NETWORKS OF LANGUAGES / CULTURES
IGNORED BY THE CONSULTER (3)
• This way the Platform transforms itself into a quite
miraculous tool. People can know typical features of
other cultures and so that we are able to share ours
with all the human beings to learn to better know each
other and to respect each other because the Humanity
needs to know the best of every culture to be able to
progress and to go out of the dark times in which we
live, because it seems to us that our way of living is
better than that of the others but it is possible that
that is not always true.
• We have the watch but they have the time.
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17. There are not first class languages
and second class languages in the
Intercultural Zirano Platform
• All cultures coexist pacifically in the Intercultural
Multilanguage Zirano Platform.
• All the languages are important because they serve as
vehicles of expression of specific and very valuable
cultures, independently of the number of persons who
speak them and of the bigger or minor erudite
treatment they have had up to the moment.
• All the communication takes place in one web
interface, which allows the work of decentralized
teams and telework labor.
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18. INTERCULTURAL MULTILANGUAGE
ZIRANO PLATFORM
Thanks for your attention
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