Morphological Analysis of Sahidic Coptic for Automatic Glossing

Morphological Analysis of Sahidic Coptic for Automatic Glossing Daniel E. Smith, Mans Hulden University of Colorado daniel.e.smith@colorado.edu, mans.hulden@colorado.edu Abstract We report on the implementation of a morphological analyzer for the Sahidic dialect of Coptic, a now extinct Afro-Asiatic language. The system is developed in the finite-state paradigm. The main purpose of the project is provide a method by which scholars and linguists can semi-automatically gloss extant texts written in Sahidic. Since a complete lexicon containing all attested forms in different manuscripts requires significant expertise in Coptic spanning almost 1,000 years, we have equipped the analyzer with a core lexicon and extended it with a ‘guesser’ ability to capture out-of-vocabulary items in any inflection. We also suggest an ASCII transliteration for the language. A brief evaluation is provided. Keywords: Sahidic Coptic, Egyptian, finite-state, foma, morphological analysis, glossing 1. Introduction The aim of this paper is to present the results of a project to create a computational analyzer/lemmatizer/glosser that processes phonological, morphological and semantic infor- mation about the Coptic language. This analyzer is capable of processing a section of raw text which has been prop- erly transliterated and producing a series of glosses based on what is known of the structure of the Coptic language, specifically the Sahidic dialect. This paper is structured as follows. We begin by in- troducing the Coptic language and giving a brief outline of its word structure. Following this section will be a brief summary of some of the specific complications that must be overcome working with Coptic in a computational setting. Then, the analyzer will be presented with examples of the input and output given. Finally, the utility of the analyzer as a tool for both teaching and research is outlined. This paper aims to show that computational methods and the Coptic language present a promising synergy for furthering research into both fields. 2. Overview of Coptic The Coptic language (ISO 639-1: cop) represents the last stage of Egyptian. The diagnostic traits of Coptic last from roughly 300 AD until the final movement of the spo- ken language into a basically dead liturgical language in 1300 AD (Loprieno, 1995; Layton, 2004). Coptic is gener- ally divided into five dialects: Sahidic, Bohairic, Fayyumic, Achmimic and Subachmimic (Lambdin, 1983). Of these, this paper will focus on the Sahidic dialect which was the standard dialect of the early Coptic Church1 and seems to be descended from the primary dialect of the Pharaonic politi- cal elite in Memphis and Thebes (Lambdin, 1983). Sahidic is also the only dialect with a substantial body of original literature. 2.1. Writing system Written Coptic used a phonemic system based on the Greek script which incorporated elements of the earlier De- motic writing system native to Egypt. For the most part there 1Bohairic is the current lithurgical language of the Coptic Or- thodox Church. Figure 1: Fragment of Coptic manuscript (The Gospel of St. John, from Thompson (1924)). is a one-to-one correspondence between the phonemes of the spoken language and the graphemes of the written …

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