Using Finite-State Machines to Automatically Scan Classical Greek Hexameter
This provides an efficient tool for scholars in classical studies, though it is incremental as it applies existing finite-state methods to a specific linguistic task.
The paper tackles the problem of automatically scanning Classical Greek hexameter verse by developing an algorithm using finite-state machines, achieving quick and linguistically sound analyses as validated on hand-annotated data.
This paper presents a fully automatic approach to the scansion of Classical Greek hexameter verse. In particular, the paper describes an algorithm that uses deterministic finite-state automata and local linguistic rules to implement a targeted search for valid spondeus patterns and, in addition, a weighted finite-state transducer to correct and complete partial analyses and to reject invalid candidates. The paper also details the results of an empirical evaluation of the annotation quality resulting from this approach on hand-annotated data. It is shown that a finite-state approach provides quick and linguistically sound analyses of hexameter verses as well as an efficient formalisation of linguistic knowledge. The project code is available (see https://github.com/anetschka/greek_scansion).