Re: [aspell-devel] support for compound words and word skipping by context

[Chris Hornbaker]

On Friday 26 March 2004 20:37, Kevin Atkinson wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Mar 2004, Chris Hornbaker wrote:
> > On Friday 26 March 2004 17:07, Kevin Atkinson wrote:
> > > On Fri, 26 Mar 2004, Chris Hornbaker wrote:
> > > >  I just saw the entry for support for compound words under Important
> > > > Items in the To Do section of the pre-release manual docs. The
> > > > language I'd like to add support for has the potential to have
> > > > millions of compound words. It has some simple rules for combining
> > > > them (like, no consonant pairs). If I can be of some help, then
> > > > please let me know.
> >
> > I didn't mean "no consonant pairs" in the above, I meant "no double
> > consonant pairs", like dd, cc, gg, etc.
> >
> > > I need details.  I am especially interested in cases where
> > > concatenating two words together is not sufficient.
> >
> > Typically an extra letter is added -- sorta like a glue that keeps them
> > separate, but together. When two consonants connect that -are not-
> > permissible, then the letter 'y' is placed between them. So, "dd" becomes
> > "dyd".
> >
> > There's also the case where you'd need to add a consonant to meet the
> > "you must have a permissible consonant pair within the first five letters
> > of the word, excluding the letters y and ' (apostrophe)" rule. When you
> > have a word like "soi" and you want to combine it with "sai" (creating
> > "soisai", which is illegal) you use the letter "r" to create a
> > permissible consonant pair.  In this case, "soisai" would need to be
> > "soirsai" to be legal. If, however, "r" cannoy be used (like when it
> > would create a "rr" consonant pair), then you would use "n".
>
> OK.  I see.  Can it get more complicated than that?

Yes. In fact, it would be much easier to point you to the reference grammar. 
http://lojban.org/publications/reference_grammar/chapter4.html
The chapter should be understandable on its own. It also gives a good 
background on some linguistic concepts. :-)

I can't really phrase what the chapter details any better than it does, but, 
if you stumble on something, then let me know and I'll try to explain.

-- 
Christopher Hornbaker           
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