[An-lang] Glossing notation

[Hugh Paterson III]

I prefer the quote marks unless there is a glottal stop in the orthography
of the translation, then it becomes a typographical nightmare.  Parentheses
in my opinion should be for parenthetical statements within the primary
language of the text body.

- Hugh Paterson.  Someone younger than a baby boomer.

On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 12:12 PM John Lynch <johnlynch123 at gmail.com> wrote:

> It would be interesting to know the reason for this proposed change.
>
> Parentheses are usually used to add additional but non-essential
> information. Calling on my editorial experience, I can envisage two
> different kinds of situations. One is where the non-English term is used as
> if it was an ordinary word in an ordinary sentence, in which case the
> parenthetical translation might be appropriate. For example:
>
> a. Only men may enter the *fale* (house) during mortuary ceremonies ...
>
> or
>
> b. Only men may enter the house (*fale*) during mortuary ceremonies ...
>
> The other is where the focus is on the word as an item of
> linguistic exposition, in which case the parenthesis is mistakenly
> treating the gloss as non-essential. In such cases I would support
> retaining the current practice. E.g.:
>
> c. The first syllable of  *fale* 'house' is usually stressed,although ...
>
>
> John
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 3:44 PM Ross Clark <r.clark at auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
>
>> I've had an inquiry from the editor of a journal which sometimes
>> publishes papers of a (Pacific) linguistic nature. They are contemplating
>> changing the format for glosses of single words in languages other than
>> English from single-quotes to parentheses -- e.g.from
>>
>> fale 'house'
>>
>> to
>>
>> fale (house).
>>
>> This would bring it into agreement with the reverse situation, where a
>> local-language equivalent is given for a word in non-linguistic discussion:
>>
>> house (fale).
>>
>> [Sorry, all those fale's should be in italics. Don't know how to make
>> that happen in Outlook.]
>>
>> Apparently the Chicago Manual of Style approves this.
>>
>> I don’t find this change particularly disturbing, even though
>> single-quotes is a pretty widely followed practice in linguistics. But I
>> wanted to circulate the question a little to see if there is strong feeling
>> about it, or if people can think of difficulties which haven’t occurred to
>> me.
>> Thanks for your input.
>> Ross Clark
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> John Lynch, FAHA
> Emeritus Professor of Pacific Languages
> University of the South Pacific
> PMB 9072
> Port Vila.  VANUATU
> Phone: (+678) 25036    Mobile: (+678) 5920220    Fax: (+678) 22633
> _______________________________________________
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> http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/an-lang
>
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