Apocopic word forms

[gilln]

We are in the process of converting a Greek NT text from cursive script with diacritic marks into upper case Greek. We are restoring the iota subscripts where they appear, and also the missing letters represented in apocopic words. We are not Greek scholars and have a question about how to convert some of these apocopic words.
When these appear before "rough breathing", the form of the word changes. For example, μετ’ becomes μεθ’, or επ’ becomes εφ’.
In the case of μετ’ we are converting it as ΜΕΤΑ. The question is whether μεθ’ should be also ΜΕΘΑ or ΜΕΤΑ.
Would greatly appreciate help with this one.

[Barry Hofstetter]

Don't know why anyone would want to do this, but the reason that it changes to the aspirated form is because it precedes an aspiration without and intervening letter. ΜΕΤΑ would be the correct form, and so with all of them.

[gilln]

Many thanks for such a swift response. We greatly appreciate the help.

[Jonathan Robie]

I don't know what you are doing, but I should mention that for many applications it is very helpful to have both representations in your data. For instance, if you are using XML or HTML, you might have a representation like this:

Code: Select all

<w class="prep" 
  osisId="Matt.12.45!5" 
  n="400120450050010" 
  lemma="μετά" 
  normalized="μεθ’"
  gloss="with">μεθ’</w>

The user only sees what appears in the text, μεθ’, but if you have to do searches based on lemmas or normalized forms you can.

[gilln]

Thanks for the suggestion Jonathan. We'll bear it in mind.