Txt Parsing

David Crystal's newest book, Txtng: The Gr8 Db8, has just recently been released. I'm looking forward to reading it (though I'll likely wait until the paperback is available ... I'm staunchly anti-hardback). From the book's Amazon synopsis:

"Does texting spell the end of literacy? Is there a panic in the media? David Crystal looks at the evidence. He investigates how texting began and who uses it, why and what for. He shows how to interpret its mix of pictograms, logograms, abbreviations, symbols, and wordplay, and how it works in different languages.He explores the ways similar devices have been used in different eras and discovers that the texting system of conveying sounds and meaning goes back a long way, all the way in fact to the origins of writing - and he concludes that far from hindering literacy, texting may turn out to help it."

My colleagues and I were wondering if there was any NLP work being done on parsing text messages? I haven't been able to find anything. Since there is an growing market for thinks like machine translation of text messages, I gotta believe somebody out there is researching this. But, has anything been published?

The linguistics of texting was, in fact, the topic of my very first post on this blog here.

My basic point last year was this: "I've noticed that, in the context of email and online slang/abbreviations, the character "8" is the only number or character that gets used to replace a phonological rime (a nucleus plus a coda). Most other replacements either replace whole syllables, or just consonant clusters.

For example (from Wikipedia's "List of Internet slang phrases" [note: this page no longer exists on Wikipedia so I linked to the Simple English page that copied it])

2L8 -- too late
GR8 -- great
H8 — Hate
L8R — Later (sometimes abbreviated to L8ER)
M8 — Mate
sk8/sk8r — skate/skater
W8 — Wait"

I hope Crystal discusses the linguistics of text formation.

On chicken pecks and why "8" is the only number that gets used to replace a syllabic rime.

I've noticed that, in the context of email and online slang/abbreviations, the character "8" is the only number or character that gets used to replace a phonological rime (a nucleus plus a coda). Most other replacements either replace whole syllables, or just consonant clusters.

For example (from Wikipedia's "List of Internet slang phrases")
2L8 -- too late
GR8 -- great
H8 — Hate
L8R — Later (sometimes abbreviated to L8ER)
M8 — Mate
sk8/sk8r — skate/skater
W8 — Wait

The numbers "2" and "4" can replace whole words:
2U2 — To you too
G2G — 'Got to go' or 'Good to go
L2P — Learn to play
N2M — Not(hing) too much
N2B — Not too bad
P2P — Peer to peer
T4P - Tell for people

Here is an example of each character replacing a whole syllable:
NE1 — "Anyone" = an.y.one

"X" replaces a consonant cluster in a few cases, but not the nuclei of the rime:
KTHX — OK, thanks
TH(N)X, TNX or TX — Thanks

Why is "8" the only number that gets used to replace a whole rime (a nucleus plus a coda)? My guess is that it's because, of the 13 basic number names in English, only two begin with a vowel ("8" and "11"). The name for "11" is itself 3 syllables long, so it's out as a candidate. The name for "8" is the only single syllable number name that starts with a vowel. So it's the only one that is eligible for replacing a rime.

English Number names
zero
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
eleven
twelve

So, the constraints on using characters to replace a rime are 1) must be pronounced as a single syllable and 2) start with a vowel. How many keyboard characters meet these two criteria? Letter names = 2. If we tried to use them to replace rimes, would the usage catch on?

"F" and "X" are the only letter names that follows the VC(C) pattern of "8", so "x" it could be used to replace "-ecks/-eks" for example, but how many words end in that?

Here's a valiant try:
chicken pecks -- chicken pX??

Presumably "@" could replace any "-at" rime and maybe (stretching here) just maybe you could get "&" to replace "-and". Do people do either?
cat = c@
sat = s@
flat = fl@
sand = s&
land = l&