On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 9:25 PM, David Starner <prosfilaes_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> Hyphens generally make multiple words into one anyway. There's not really
> multiple hyphens the way there's separate quotes and apostrophes.
>
Generally, but not always, just as apostrophes aren't always at a
contracted word boundary. There is only one hyphen because no language
(AFAIK) claims it as part of its alphabet.
Leo
> On 7:01pm, Thu, Jun 4, 2015 Leo Broukhis <leob_at_mailcom.com> wrote:
>
>> Along the same lines, we might need a MODIFIER LETTER HYPHEN, because,
>> for example, the work ack-ack isn't decomposable into words, or even
>> morphemes, "ack" and "ack".
>>
>> Leo
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 6:31 PM, David Starner <prosfilaes_at_gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 2:38 PM Markus Scherer <markus.icu_at_gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> "don’t" is a contraction of two words, it is not one word.
>>>>
>>>
>>> But as he points out, it's not a contraction of don and t; it is, at
>>> best, a contraction of do and n't. It's eliding, not punctuating. In the
>>> comments, he also brings up the examples of "Don’t you mind?" being okay
>>> but not *"Do not you mind?", and "fo’c’sle".
>>>
>>> > You can't use simple regular expressions to find word boundaries.
>>>
>>> Who uses _simple_ regular expressions? You can't use any code to
>>> reliably find word boundaries in English, and that's a problem.
>>>
>>
>>
Received on Fri Jun 05 2015 - 01:03:27 CDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Fri Jun 05 2015 - 01:03:27 CDT