Ten years ago, when Ulrik Sandborg-Petersen and I started collaborating, we came up with a way of referencing lexemes that would satisfy both the lumpers and splitters. At the time we wrote a paper that we circulated to a small audience but now it’s finally up on Academia.edu.
The 2006 unpublished paper is entitled A New Numbering System for Greek New Testament Lexemes.
Here’s the abstract:
Numbering systems (such as Strong’s) are a popular way to reference the lexemes of the Greek New Testament corpus but a straight enumeration is not without problems, particularly when there is disagreement about whether two forms are the same lexeme or not. We present a way of referencing lexemes that allows competing viewpoints to be represented simultaneously. Existing numbering systems can be mapped into this new system without any loss of granularity and new analyses can be expressed without violating the integrity of existing references into the system.