2026-09-23 — Twelve conjunctions added to the dictionary
What this run did
This was an unattended scheduled run of the TKG English Learner's Dictionary. A small program, the selector, chose its mode: build, writing new entries from the queue of words still to be written. The run was allowed up to twenty new entries and US$1.25 of paid model calls.
There was no leftover work from earlier runs and nothing in the owner's inbox.
The previous run (a maintenance pass) had freed sixteen common conjunctions that were stuck in the queue. This run took twelve of them: after, although, before, but, if, nor, once, or, since, though, unless, until. It left out as, so, than, and that, which have many uses each and need more room. Each entry has between one and four senses (distinct meanings). The three largest (but, if, or) open with a "core idea", one sentence that says what all the senses share.
The entries concentrate on what learners actually get wrong with these words: using will after if, when, until, and similar words when talking about the future (if it will rain); using although and but together in one sentence; adding a second not after unless; using the present tense instead of the present perfect with since (I live here since I was ten); and word order after nor (nor do I, not nor I do).
How the entries were checked
Every entry went through the full checking pipeline:
- Format and word forms: all twelve passed the validator; conjunctions have no inflected forms.
- Pronunciation: all 24 transcriptions (American and British for each word) were confirmed by a panel of models and agreed with the Carnegie Mellon pronouncing dictionary, an open data set consulted at run time and not stored.
- Two outside reviewers: two models from other companies (called reviewer-a and reviewer-b) read every field of every entry.
What the reviewers found and what I decided
The reviewers raised 19 issues, 18 of them marked blocking. All 19 came from reviewer-a; reviewer-b found nothing to object to in any of the twelve entries. I read each one, agreed with 18, and rejected 1. The main real problems:
- before, second sense (It was weeks before the house was ready): I had defined it as "until", which is wrong. The sentence says how much time passes before something happens. Rewritten, and the claim that until is a synonym was removed.
- after and before: the notes on learner mistakes mentioned the -ing form (after finishing), which belongs to the preposition, not the conjunction. They now say plainly that the -ing form is the preposition use.
- if, the formal sense in a good, if rather long, meeting: my definition made it sound like a guess ("and maybe"). The phrase actually states that the meeting was long. Definition corrected.
- unless: my usage note claimed that unless is not used for imagined past situations. That is too strong. It was replaced with a contrast grammar books agree on (I'll be sad if you don't come, which sounds better than unless you come).
- Two weak learner-mistake examples were replaced or dropped. One, on or, became a real mistake that some learners make: ending a statement with or? as a question tag.
The one rejection: reviewer-a said that whether, not if, is required when a question includes or not. In fact I don't know if he's coming or not is ordinary English. Only whether can come directly before or not, and the entry already says so.
What did not work
Reviewer-b's first reply on unless came back unreadable, so I re-ran that one reviewer. The re-run added a duplicate record of reviewer-a's review to the entry's history and left the empty record in place. I cleaned it by hand (it is tool bookkeeping, not dictionary content). The problem is written up in wiki/notes/review-panel-rerun-duplicate-records.md for a later run to fix in the tool.
Spend
US$0.35 of this run's US$1.25 limit, and US$0.35 of the US$5.00 daily cap.
What is next
The dictionary now has 342 entries, all reviewed. The selector will pick the next run's mode. The obvious next build work is the four remaining conjunctions (as, so, than, that) and sixteen common prepositions. One note for that work: towards is the British form of toward and should be recorded as a variant, not a second entry. An originality check (searching the web for our definitions to confirm they were not copied) is due next run.
For the owner
Nothing new needs your decision. Two older open questions remain in wiki/open-questions.md: whether to split be, have, do, and one by part of speech, and how the inline marks should look on the site.