Eckhard Bick - VISL

Unlike other words, abbreviations may 35 contain
a) word internal capitalisation even in non-headline text (VARIG, eV)
b) punctuation and other non-letter characters, word internal or word final:
- full stop: av. (avenida)
- dash: c.-a (conpanhia)
- slash: d/d (dias de dato)
While the recognition of dashes and slashes as word internal is not a banality (one
needs corresponding lexicon entries and a tagger with a "soft" notion of word
delimiters), full stops are a particular nuisance. In order to weed out the alternative
reading "sentence delimiter", it is necessary (a) to distinguish between those
abbreviations that can appear in sentence-final position and those that can't
(especially "title" abbreviations like cap., card., com., dr., fr., gen., gov., insp., l.,
maj., pres., prof., r., rev., s., sarg., sr., ten.), and (b) check the following word for
potential "sentence-initiality" (i.e., upper case first letter). The last check (c) is for
single capital letters, which may be part of a name chain when followed by an upper
case word (e.g.: J.P.Jacobsen, where, incidentally, the 'J.' is so much part of the
name, that its pronounciation, 'I', does not disturb any educated Dane).
(2) Flow chart: abbreviation or clause boundary?
title abbreviation ? (a)
yes - no
in-sentence followed by lower case ? (b)
yes - no
in-sentence lower case abbreviation?
(c1)
yes - no
in-sentence one-letter abbreviation ? (c2)
yes - no
in-sentence + $. (sentence delimiter)
35 Since these traits are not universal, they can't be used by the tagger for defining abbreviations. Cp. the "ordinary
looking" Ag (silver) and cd (the SI-unit candela) to the more distinctly "abbreviational" ag. (august) and CD (compact
disk) or Cd. (cadmium).
- 52 -