<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;">The earliest instance of this “superscript” style of glossing that I know of comes from this 17th-century Latin translation of the Confucian classics: <a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Confucius_sinarum_philosophus_sive_scien/BerpG7rz0_YC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=RA1-PA1&printsec=frontcover&dq=sermones">https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Confucius_sinarum_philosophus_sive_scien/BerpG7rz0_YC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=RA1-PA1&printsec=frontcover&dq=sermones</a>. Here, the words/phrases in the Latin translation are marked with superscripts corresponding to the order of characters in the original text (which is not provided).<div><br></div><div>The practice of using superscript numbers to indicate a different word order is even older than this; I remember a (monolingual) Renaissance edition of Phaedrus’s <i>Fables</i> that uses superscripts to help the reader “unscramble” the poetic syntax of the original. This isn’t glossing, though.</div><div><br></div><div>Siva<br id="lineBreakAtBeginningOfMessage"><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>On 8 Jul 2025, at 12:02 pm, David Nash via Lingtyp <lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 8/7/2025 00:23, Sebastian Nordhoff
via Lingtyp wrote:<br>
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<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:54f9cdf6-2dd4-4376-8eda-288ef328b6dc@glottotopia.de">For
instance, for Australia, we have both word-to-word as well as
sentence-to-sentence translations in Meyer (1843), see <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://paperhive.org/documents/items/DoB16j3955xu?a=p:298" safelinkhref="https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpaperhive.org%2Fdocuments%2Fitems%2FDoB16j3955xu%3Fa%3Dp%3A298&data=05%7C02%7Cdavid.nash%40anu.edu.au%7Ceefa64d5b8744ae148c408ddbd61f9c4%7Ce37d725cab5c46249ae5f0533e486437%7C0%7C0%7C638874950718360443%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=wjfd2CevtXZgscrWok1a6IU9AFCdsiFGqdt%2Bia5mC1Q%3D&reserved=0" title="Decoded from: https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpaperhive.org%2Fdocuments%2Fitems%2FDoB16j3955xu%3Fa%3Dp%3A298&data=05%7C02%7Cdavid.nash%40anu.edu.au%7Ceefa64d5b8744ae148c408ddbd61f9c4%7Ce37d725cab5c46249ae5f0533e486437%7C0%7C0%7C638874950718360443%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIw
LjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=wjfd2CevtXZgscrWok1a6IU9AFCdsiFGqdt%2Bia5mC1Q%3D&reserved=0" moz-do-not-send="true">https://paperhive.org/documents/items/DoB16j3955xu?a=p:298</a>
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</blockquote>
What has to be the earliest instance of word-by-word glossing of an
Australian language is William Dawes' from 1790. He used superscript
numbers. The first occurrence in his extant notebooks is<br>
<blockquote>Yenma<sup>1</sup> kaóui<sup>2</sup> Walk<sup>1</sup>
come<sup>2</sup>, or in plain English come here or walk this way.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.williamdawes.org/ms/msview.php?image-id=book-a-page-6">https://www.williamdawes.org/ms/msview.php?image-id=book-a-page-6</a><br>
</blockquote>
There are subsequent examples of Dawes using four or more
superscripts.<br>
David<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www0.anu.edu.au/linguistics/nash/">https://www0.anu.edu.au/linguistics/nash/</a><br>
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