word boundary issues for interlinearized

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bookworm

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Sep 17, 2008, 11:22:05 PM9/17/08
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Dear All,

I've come across a language which the word boundary is represented by
a 'dot' as keying 'space bar'. In such case, what need to be done in
order to make the interlinearization the non-roman script text.

Thanks,
Paidion

ToolboxSupport

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Sep 19, 2008, 3:13:32 PM9/19/08
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Dear Paidion,

Toolbox can deal with any number of words joined together, except for
possible affixes that occur on words inside the sentence (more below
on this).

In Tibetan, which uses dots between syllables, people usually make one
dictionary entry that consists of just the dot. The gloss can be just
a roman period (and part of speech, too). That makes it fairly
unobtrusive as it does get "glossed" by the interlinear.

The dictionary entries can have internal dots but no final dot. That
allows words to have regular punctuation at the end of the sentence.

The parse settings needed are those that the Start New Project kit
uses: allow multiple roots, output root guess, output failure mark.

If all the words of a sentence are present in a dictionary, it will
parse the whole thing. If they aren't, Toolbox will stop at the first
word that's not in the dictionary and the failure mark will be in
front of that word. The rest of the sentence will not be spread apart
(parsed). Once you enter that word into the dictionary and tell
Toolbox to interlinerize again, Toolbox will continue parsing that
sentence, stopping at the next word not found, etc.

Basically that's all that folk have needed to make it work.

If there are affixes that need to be handled, the whole word needs to
be entered (possibly in a separate "Parse dictionary"). The whole word
would be entered and its parse breakdown as the \u form. Those are the
only two fields needed for the Parse dictionary.

This is a bit terse. Let me know if you need more details.

Toolbox Support
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