Glossing Rules
From Glossing Ancient Languages
Rules
Alignment
- (1) Alignment Rule
- A word and its gloss need to be vertically arranged in a left-aligned way. [1]
Example:
| Vorgestern | bin | ich | von | einem | Kurzurlaub | zurückgekommen |
| the.day.before.yesterday | am | I | from | a | short.vacation | back.come |
‘I came back from a short vacation the day before yesterday.’
But not
Vorgestern bin ich von einem Kurzurlaub zurückgekommen.
the.day.before.yesterday am I from a short.vacation back.come
The best way to edit this in text editing programs is by the means of invisible tables, i.e. tables without border lines. (Whitespaces like blanks or tabs are not very helpful for this purpose.)
One-to-Many Correspondences
One language word = many gloss elements
Within a pair of word and gloss, neither the word nor the gloss may contain blanks.
- (2a) Standard Joining Rule
- If one text word corresponds to two or more elements in the gloss, these elements have to be joined by a punctuation mark. The standard punctuation mark for joining elements in the gloss is the period “.”. [2]
Example:
| Vorgestern | bin | ich | von | einem | Kurzurlaub | zurückgekommen |
| the.day.before.yesterday | am | I | from | a | short.vacation | back.come |
‘I came back from a short vacation the day before yesterday.’
But not
| Vorgestern | bin | ich | von | einem | Kurzurlaub | zurückgekommen |
| the day before yesterday | am | I | from | a | short vacation | back come |
- Standard Exception
- The sequence PERSON–NUMBER is usually spelled without the period “.”, i.e. abbreviated as e.g. “3PL” (instead of “3.PL”). [3]
For another meaning of the period “.” in cases in which other punctuation marks like the colon “:” and hyphen “-” are also used (‘expert mode’), see below.
Many language words = one gloss element
- (2c) Joining Rule (other way around)
- If two or more text words corresponds to one elements in the gloss, these elements have to be joined by a punctuation mark. The standard punctuation mark for joining language words that correspond to one single gloss is the underscore “_”. [4]
Example:
| I | came | back | from | a | short | vacation | the_day_before_yesterday |
| ich | kam | zurück | von | ein | kurz | Urlaub | gestern |
‘Vorgestern bin ich von einem Kurzurlaub zurückgekommen.’
But not
| I | came | back | from | a | short | vacation | the day before yesterday |
| ich | kam | zurück | von | ein | kurz | Urlaub | gestern |
Analyzing grammatical categories
- (2a) Categories Markup Rule
- Grammatical categories marked on or inherent to the word may be analyses in the gloss. These grammatical categories have to be typeset in small capital letters (or else in normal capital letters). For the sake of space, they are usually abbreviated. [5]
Example:
| Vorgestern | bin | ich | von | einem | Kurzurlaub | zurückgekommen |
| the.day.before.yesterday | be.PRS.1SG | 1SG.NOM | from | ART.INDF.SG.M.DAT | short.vacation.M.SG.DAT | back.come.PTCP.PRF |
‘I came back from a short vacation the day before yesterday.’
Alternatively, one might want to leave some elements not analyzed:
| Vorgestern | bin | ich | von | einem | Kurzurlaub | zurückgekommen |
| the.day.before.yesterday | am | I | from | a.SG.M.DAT | short.vacation.M.SG.DAT | back.come.PTCP.PRF |