[Lingtyp] Resources on glossing choices

Haspelmath, Martin haspelmath at shh.mpg.de
Mon Jan 27 10:36:50 UTC 2020


I agree with everything that Danny and Christian said (and I recommend again Christian's website: https://christianlehmann.eu/ling/ling_meth/ling_description/grammaticography/gloss/index.php), but let me briefly comment on a small part of Christian's post:

"As everybody agrees, glosses fulfill a practical purpose. They presuppose a theory and a methodology which precede them; and they cannot possibly represent all the theoretical and methodological decisions underlying them."

There are two types of theories: there is a general theory of Human Language ("general comparative grammar"), and there are language-particular theories: each description of a particular language is a theory of that language.

This is often forgotten, but it is useful to keep in mind both for description/comparison, AND for glossing – because we can do the glossing in a strictly language-particular perspective, or in a comparative perspective.

So the glossing of the Ende ‑eya suffix depends not only on the particular analytical decision (ambiguity or vagueness), but also on the perspective ("the kind of theory"). If I cite an example from a grammar in a comparative context, I make sure to gloss it in such a way that it can be understood without knowing much about the language in question. This usually entails glossing Ende ‑eya as "1DU.S.PST" (not opaquely as "LOCU.S.PST" if this is not at issue), and it also means that I replace Lezgian AOR (for "Aorist") by "PST" in a typological context (unless the contrast between two two Lezgian past tenses, the Aorist and the Past, happens to be crucial).

Best,
Martin

On 24.01.20 18:15, Christian Lehmann wrote:

Dear Danny et al.,

let me briefly comment on one issue that is obviously controversial. Some think that the basic principle of consistency of glossing requires that there be a biunique mapping of morpheme to gloss. Others think that the basic principle of transparency (viz. enabling the reader to grasp the [morphological] structure of the glossed text) requires that the gloss of a morpheme be context-dependent, i.e. that it show its specific function in the particular grammatical context. We are, thus, faced with a conflict between two well-motivated principles.

The primary purpose of a gloss is to represent the morpheme for a reader who knows linguistics, but does not know the language. The notion of the identity of morphemes presupposes, as I said in my previous message in this thread (31/12/2019), a distinction between homonymy and polysemy. The reader does not want the same gloss for homonymous morphs, nor does she want the unity of a polysemous morpheme to be obfuscated by variant glosses.

As everybody agrees, glosses fulfill a practical purpose. They presuppose a theory and a methodology which precede them; and they cannot possibly represent all the theoretical and methodological decisions underlying them. The practical function includes their context-dependency in a wider sense: the form of a useful gloss depends partly on the kind of (metalinguistic) text that the glossed text is embedded in. If the glossed text is an example in a grammar, then this may contain the entire information concerning the morphemes and their glosses, arranged in chapters on morphology and indices of morphemes, glosses and terms. In such an environment, the requirement of consistency becomes secondary, because the metalinguistic context explains what each gloss means. If, on the contrary, there is, in the metalinguistic context of the glossed text, no grammatical comment, then the glosses and the index of glosses are the only clue the reader has to the identity of morphemes. Making glosses context-dependent in such an environment means misleading the reader about the identity of morphemes. Which contradicts the primary purpose of the gloss. In such an environment, I submit, glosses should be consistent, i.e. unique for each morpheme.

Best,

Christian

--

Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
Rudolfstr. 4
99092 Erfurt
Deutschland

Tel.:   +49/361/2113417
E-Post: christianw_lehmann at arcor.de<mailto:christianw_lehmann at arcor.de>
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Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de<mailto:haspelmath at shh.mpg.de>)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
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Leipzig University
Institut fuer Anglistik
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