On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 9:25 PM, David Starner <prosfil...@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 <l...@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 <prosfil...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 2:38 PM Markus Scherer <markus....@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. >>> >> >>