Should elisions be tokenized?

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NathanSmith
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Should elisions be tokenized?

Post by NathanSmith »

I found when tokenizing the SBLGNT with NLTK that elisions are split off as separate tokens - e.g. μεθ, ’ instead of μεθ’. This is due to how the NLTK default parser works, and I've found a way around it.

But it raised the question for me: should Greek elisions be considered separate tokens or not? I know that in English the possessive use of the apostrophe is tokenized separately (e.g. Mark, 's) because it indicates the possession, and I believe contractions are handled similarly.

For Greek elisions my feeling is that they should be not be separate tokens because they do not add anything semantically to the sentence and are a function of pronunciation, essentially. Someone correct me if I am making a bad assumption here.
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Should elisions be tokenized?

Post by Stephen Carlson »

I'm not exactly sure what your goal is, but based on your blog it seems that not tokenizing elisions is what you want. In fact, I would normalize μεθ to μετα. The NA28 changed its editorial practice about about ἀλλά vs. ἀλλ' before a vowel, and that is one area where editions may differ.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Ken M. Penner
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Re: Should elisions be tokenized?

Post by Ken M. Penner »

NathanSmith wrote:For Greek elisions my feeling is that they should be not be separate tokens because they do not add anything semantically to the sentence and are a function of pronunciation, essentially. Someone correct me if I am making a bad assumption here.
I agree.
Ken M. Penner
Professor and Chair of Religious Studies, St. Francis Xavier University
Co-Editor, Digital Biblical Studies
General Editor, Lexham English Septuagint
Co-Editor, Online Critical Pseudepigrapha pseudepigrapha.org
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