5. OCCURRENCES PORTALS
The biggest portals on the OVERVIEW layout are the two 'occurrences' portals which sit just below the elaboration bars.
Fig. 5.1 The NoH and JSM Occurrences portals in the ALLSYD database
The portal on the left, 'NoH', focusses on the brown 'No Hyphens' field (see 3.2 Word Fields). In Fig. 5.1 it reveals all occurrences of buwa in the ALLSYD database. The portal on the right, 'JSM', focusses on the yellow 'English JS Main' field (see 3.4 Translation Fields), and in this instance reveals all the occurrences in the ALLSYD database of the word ‘blow’.
​
Among the more than 12 000 records in the ALLSYD database is the following example:
Fig. 5.2 The words the occurrences portals relate to have been enlarged here
This is the record that brings up the results shown above and in the two examples below.
1. NoH OCCURRENCES: buwa
First, the 'NoH Occurrences' portal at the upper left concentrates on the brown NoH field. It displays all entries in the database concerned (the ALLSYD database) for buwa:
Fig. 5.3 All the ALLSYD database occurrences of the NoH entry buwa are displayed
A glance at the yellow JSM ('Eng JSM') column in this display reveals that buwa is to do with blowing, wind, breath. But Dawes has given the translation that the fire (gwiyang) was ‘out’ (extinguished, dead, not lit). So was he correct? The occurrences portals help in making such assessments.
2. JSM OCCURRENCES: ‘blow’
The 'Eng JSM Occurrences' portal at the upper right concentrates on the yellow Eng JSM field, in which every entry necessarily is for ‘blow’, for it is precisely this word that the portal seeks to find:
Fig. 5.4 All the ALLSYD database occurrences of the Eng JSM entry ‘blow’ are displayed
Among the entries in the database for the word ‘blow’, some are buwa, and all begin with bu.
What the occurrences portals appear to suggest is that the sentence gwiyang buwa-la of Fig. 5.2 did not mean that the fire was out, but rather was a command: ‘fire, blow it!’ (gwiyang = ‘fire’), an instruction to Dawes to blow on the fire to make it burn, and revive it from its nearly ‘out’ condition.
So this sentence, chosen as an example of the operation of the occurrences portals, illustrates how the portals can help when looking at particular words, whether in NoH form for the Australian word, or in the JSM form of the simplified English translation.