# Syllable-, Bigram-, and Morphology-Driven Pseudoword Generation in Greek
## 2 Related Work
### Constructing Pseudowords in Greek: Methodological Considerations
A representative list of the generated pseudowords is provided in Appendix A. However, the pseudowords generated pose several significant issues, which we briefly outline below:  
1. _Accent marks:_ Some pseudowords displayed either two accent marks (e.g., \(\omega\mu\eta\
u\) ['o'min], \(\omega\mu\omega\)['o'mos]) or none at all (e.g., \(\alpha\tau\mu\eta\) [atmi], \(\
u\mu\omega\) [imi]), in violation of the orthographic rules of Greek. 2. _Phonotactic challenges:_ The software occasionally generated pseudowords with marginal or rare phonotactic patterns due to their association with specific lexical items (e.g., \(\alpha\tau\mu\eta\) [atmi] based on the source word \(\alpha\tau\mu\omega\) [at'mos]'steam'). Often, the somewhat unconventional phonotactics of the produced words were due to their association with a word of Ancient Greek origin (e.g., \(\mu\alpha\delta\mu\omega\) ['ma0 mi] based on the Ancient Greek name _K\(\delta\omega\)['ka0 mos] 'Cadmus'_). 3. _Orthographic conventions:_ UniPseudo did not consistently adhere to Greek orthographic conventions. For instance, it cannot recognize that the letter sequences \(\mu\pi\) and \(\omega\) correspond to single segments, [b] and [i], respectively. Consequently, while some six-character pseudowords consisted of six distinct segments, e.g., \(\mu\alpha\rho\mu\omega\) ['ma'mon], others consisted of four, e.g., \(\mu\pi\alpha\mu\omega\) ['bami]. 4. _Phonotactic legality:_ Automatic bigram settings for four-character words occasionally delivered phonotactically illegal pseudowords, e.g., \(\
u\alpha\mu\pi\) [nob], \(\pi\lambda\mu\alpha\) [plma], \(\tau\rho\mu\alpha\) [trma], \(\sigma\tau\mu\omega\) [stmo]. This problem can be addressed using the 'trigram setting' when creating four-character words. 5. _Bias for a specific morphosyntactic category:_ When tested, UniPseudo showed a strong tendency to generate nouns rather than other parts of speech, particularly verbs. We attempted to correct this imbalance by providing our wordlist, which contained an equal number of nouns and verbs (1000 each), as the input source. Despite this intervention, we observed that the bias persisted, as the software consistently reused the same limited set of base words. 6. _Repeated base-word usage and homonymy:_ Despite having access to a substantial input lexicon, UniPseudo frequently recycles the same words as the foundation for creating pseudowords, rather than combining elements from different source words. For instance, the pseudoword \(\tau\alpha\pi\alpha\rho\iota\) [ta'pori] is constructed from the words \(\tau\alpha\pi\acute{\epsilon}\tau o\) [ta'peto]'mat' and \(\beta\pi\pi\acute{o}\rho\iota\) [va'pori]'ship'. Interestingly, \(\beta\alpha\pi\acute{o}\rho\iota\) was used as a base word three times in this process, contributing to the trigrams \(\alpha\pi o\), \(\pi o\rho\), and \(\ op\iota\). As a result, the final pseudoword heavily depends on these repeated trigrams and risks resembling real words. Moreover, the tool occasionally generates pseudowords that are homonymous with actual Greek words due to its tendency to reuse identical base elements. For example, it produces the output \(\acute{\alpha}\)_x\(\acute{o}\)ovy\(\varepsilon\)_ [akuje], which is itself an existing word, derived from the base verbs \(\alpha\)_x\(\acute{o}\)v\(\acute{\epsilon}\iota\)_ [a'kuj] 'he/she listens to' and \(\acute{\alpha}\)_x\(\acute{o}\)v\(\acute{\epsilon}\)_ ['akuje] 'he/she listened to'. In conclusion, UniPseudo is a valuable tool for generating Greek pseudowords, but it exhibits several limitations\(-\)particularly regarding phonetic rules and orthographic consistency. The following section introduces SyBig-r-Morph, a word generator developed for Greek. The tool combines important linguistic elements, including syllabic structure, \(n\)-gram patterns, and morphological structure. By combining these elements, SyBig-r-Morph generates pseudowords that adhere to Greek phonotactics, morphological patterns, and spelling conventions.