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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Dear Mattis,</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">I am afraid the requirement to use only
one segmentation symbol and to accommodate information on the
category of the elements so segmented in the gloss line is based
on a multiple misunderstanding:</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">
<ol>
<li>Information of the kind "x is a prefix", "y is a proclitic",
"z is a stem" concerns the structural category of items x - z.
It has nothing to do with the semantics. To the extent that
there is not 1:1 mapping of meaning onto structure in
language, the same gloss (indicating the meaning of the item)
is compatible with different kinds of structural units and,
thus, with different kinds of grammatical boundary.</li>
<li>The interlinear morphological gloss is not meant to
categorize the morphological elements being glossed. It is
meant to identify each morph by a proper name which, in
principle (and fortunately in most cases) indicates its
meaning or function.</li>
<li>If you want a categorization of the units of the line being
annotated, you need more annotation layers. See Liebe &
Drude 2000 (and
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.christianlehmann.eu/ling/ling_meth/ling_description/representations/gloss/index.php?open=class_member">https://www.christianlehmann.eu/ling/ling_meth/ling_description/representations/gloss/index.php?open=class_member</a>).
Packing different categories of linguistic information into
one gloss is theoretically inconsistent and not
computationally practical.</li>
<li>It is true that the boundary symbols are not asymmetric, so
you cannot read off them which element of a pair is the affix,
the clitic and so on. However, this information is contained
in the gloss line in most cases: If the gloss of an element is
in upper case or small caps, it is a grammatical element.
Otherwise, it is a lexical element (a root or stem). If it is
a grammatical element, then the '-' vs. '=' symbol tells you
whether it is a clitic or affix. (We can work out the details
for configurations where both components of a pair thus
linked/separated are written in the same case.)<br>
</li>
</ol>
Best,<br>
<p>Christian</p>
<p>Lieb, Hans-Heinrich & Drude, Sebastian 2000, <i>Advanced
glossing: A language documentation format.</i> Berlin:
Technische Universität (Working Papers).</p>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:23c7c378-2f5e-1a77-3b26-9976111476e7@lingpy.org">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Dear all,
when working on pyigt, a Python package that handles interlinear-glossed
text in order to allow to represent it consistently in our machine- and
human-readable CLDF-format (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://cldf.clld.org">https://cldf.clld.org</a>) (draft here:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://doi.org/10.17613/nppg-x393">http://doi.org/10.17613/nppg-x393</a>), we realized at some point that the
current practice of using symbols for the segmentation of words into
morphemes which ALSO have an inherent semantics that defines the
function of one of the elements that are separated with this very symbol
can be quite problematic, since it is often ambiguous, to which element
the semantics are attached.
The = vs. - symbols are a good example here, as a - b does not tell me
which is the affix, the a or the b. The plus, which we use as a standard
separator in our version of IGT in CLDF now is unproblematic, as it does
not provide different semantics to the elements it splits.
However, given these inconsistencies, it is now impossible to
consistently investigate larger collections of IGT that have been
published, since it is often not clear which element is what, unless the
relevant information is given in the gloss layer.
My recommendation is therefore to use one segmentation symbol only and
to mark the information of whether something is a clitic, a prefix, an
infix, etc., on the element itself, in the gloss. My argument is: if you
define the semantics in the glosses (and do this in a consistent way)
you don't need to think of whether it is a clitic, an affix, or
something else. So one can just get away with one symbol for the
segmentation, and still be much more explicit than we can often observe
in the current practice.
For those interested in the arguments, we had a discussion on github,
with Florian Matter, which we consider as resolved now:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://github.com/cldf/pyigt/issues/6">https://github.com/cldf/pyigt/issues/6</a>
Best,
Mattis
On 30.05.20 15:45, Christian Lehmann wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Dear Sergey,
I understand there are at least two distinct problems there:
1. How is the process which produces your Akzentkomposita to be
categorized?
2. Once we know the type of grammatical boundary separating/joining the
two components in a unit, what is the standard boundary symbol for it?
Ad 1: From the examples that you provide, it does not appear that it is
a kind of compounding. (Consequently, I would not call the products
X-komposita, no matter what X is.) Still from your examples, it would
appear that the process is (some kind of) clisis. I take the liberty of
sending the link to my most recent article (just accepted for
publication), devoted to exactly this kind of problem:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.christianlehmann.eu/publ/lehmann_univerbation.pdf">https://www.christianlehmann.eu/publ/lehmann_univerbation.pdf</a>
Ad 2: If it is clisis, the = symbol you are using is standard. If it
were compounding, you would use the + symbol. If it is a new kind of
process, with a new kind of grammatical boundary, we would have to
deploy another symbol. There are plenty of as yet unused symbols around;
how about ⧧ (Unicode 29e7) ?
Cheers,
Christian
--
Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
Rudolfstr. 4
99092 Erfurt
Deutschland
Tel.: +49/361/2113417
E-Post: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:christianw_lehmann@arcor.de">christianw_lehmann@arcor.de</a>
Web: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.christianlehmann.eu">https://www.christianlehmann.eu</a>
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</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
---
Dr. Johann-Mattis List
Research Group Leader "Computer-Assisted Language Comparison"
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
07745 Jena
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://lingulist.de">https://lingulist.de</a>
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</pre>
</blockquote>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<p style="font-size:90%">Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann<br>
Rudolfstr. 4<br>
99092 Erfurt<br>
<span style="font-variant:small-caps">Deutschland</span></p>
<table style="font-size:80%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Tel.:</td>
<td>+49/361/2113417</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>E-Post:</td>
<td><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:christianw_lehmann@arcor.de">christianw_lehmann@arcor.de</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Web:</td>
<td><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.christianlehmann.eu">https://www.christianlehmann.eu</a></td>
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