[mikejgray]

Summary

The unit_tests workflow fails on dev at the Test Parse Utils step, on Python 3.10, 3.11, and 3.12. The failed test is tests/parse_util_tests.py::ParseUtilTests::test_get_phonemes.

The cause is a change in nltk 3.10, not a change in this repository. nltk added nltk/pathsec.py, which authorizes a download target against the directories in nltk.data.path. get_phonemes (neon_utils/parse_utils.py:115) registered its download directory one line after the download call:

nltk.download('cmudict', download_dir=download_path)
nltk.data.path.append(download_path)

The download ran against a path that was not yet registered, so nltk refused it:

[nltk_data] Error downloading 'cmudict' ... Security Violation
[nltk_data] [Downloader._download_package]: Unauthorized path
[nltk_data] /home/runner/.local/share/neon/corpora/cmudict.zip.tmp

cmudict did not install. The corpus lookup then raised LookupError.

requirements/requirements.txt pins nltk~=3.5, which permits 3.10.2. The last dev run that passed was 2026-06-08, before this nltk release.

Change

Register the download path before the download. The in test prevents duplicate entries in nltk.data.path on repeat calls.

Test plan

• Reproduced the fault alone: nltk.download('cmudict', download_dir=...) returns False with the security violation above when the directory is absent from nltk.data.path. It returns True when the directory is present.
• Deleted the local corpus cache to get the same cold-cache state as CI. test_get_phonemes fails before this change and passes after it.
• tests/parse_util_tests.py: 15 passed from a cold cache.

Note

This change is independent of #565. #565 starts from the same commit and shows the same CI fault, which this change corrects.

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