[EDITED to make the example actually line up with OP's test] There's no symbol table in the parser, so at parse time, we don't distinguish those cases: $ ca

[EDITED to make the example actually line up with OP's test] There's no symbol table in the parser, so at parse time, we don't distinguish those cases: $ cat test.rb module Test def test1 x = 14; x end def test2 y = 14; x end end $ tree-sitter parse test.rb (program [0, 0] - [9, 0] (module [0, 0] - [8, 3] name: (constant [0, 7] - [0, 11]) (method [1, 2] - [3, 5] name: (identifier [1, 6] - [1, 11]) (assignment [2, 4] - [2, 10] left: (identifier [2, 4] - [2, 5]) right: (integer [2, 8] - [2, 10])) (identifier [2, 12] - [2, 13])) (method [5, 2] - [7, 5] name: (identifier [5, 6] - [5, 11]) (assignment [6, 4] - [6, 10] left: (identifier [6, 4] - [6, 5]) right: (integer [6, 8] - [6, 10])) (identifier [6, 12] - [6, 13])))) In both cases the bit after the semicolon just parses as (identifier). For some use cases (e.g. syntax highlighting, depending on your colorization rules) it doesn't matter, and so we don't want to pay the cost. If it does matter (like in an actual implementation), then you'd have to implement this yourself and drive it by the parse tree you get from tree-sitter.