[sword-devel] lemma systems

[Chris Little]

On 04/30/2012 06:47 AM, Daniel Owens wrote:
> The related discussion about TEI markup and lexicon keys raises another
> issue: lemma systems.
>
> Currently the only defined lemma system is "strong". It is easy to
> connect to, but we need to move beyond it. I have several questions: 1.
> Should we define new lemma systems? 2. How can we make such lemma
> systems interoperable, at least in a fuzzy way?

We have two or three other systems of lemmata defined for Greek. None 
for Hebrew, that I recall.

> 1. Should we define new lemma systems?
>
> The MorphGNT based on the SBL GNT (I have a module created from James
> Tauber's Github repository last week) uses Greek lemma. The Westminster
> Hebrew Morphology uses its own lemma in Hebrew. Should we define new
> lemma systems such as: mgntlemma and whmlemma?

MorphGNT isn't a lemmatization system, so no, we should not define 
mgntlemma. It employs two or three other lemmatization systems, but 
James Tauber never replied when I asked him to identify them over a year 
ago.

WHMLemma might be worthwhile on some level, as it does define a 
lemmatization system.

> A practical issue arises with whmlemma: Aramaic and Hebrew use the same
> script. Currently lemma begin with @ for Hebrew and % for Aramaic.
> Should we retain those or go with H for Hebrew and A for Aramaic?
> Currently with Strongs there is no need for this difference because the
> numbers distinguish the language, but when natural language keys are
> used some system needs to be defined so that a lookup of a lemma in
> Daniel 3 take you to the Aramaic portion of the lexicon not the Hebrew one.

The answer to your question depends on whether @ and % are 
well-known/standard/expected prefixes for these lemmata, from the 
perspective of the expected audience of this module. (I would say they 
are, and so they should be retained as is.)

> 2. How can we make such lemma systems inter-operable, at least in a
> fuzzy way?
>
> Some mechanism needs to be created to connect the many lemma systems to
> each other. It seems to me that Bible texts will follow one lemma scheme
> or another, but why not create a system in which various lemma systems
> can be connected? For example, H1 (strong) and @אָב (whmlemma) should be
> easy to connect. If you look up H1 from KJV in a dictionary keyed to
> whmlemma, it should take you to @אָב.

Link keys in a lexicon can point from one key value another entry, like 
an alias. I don't know whether this works currently, but it used to.

So, you could assign both H0001 and @אָב as keys for a particular entry, 
with one of the two keys being a link to the other.

--Chris