[Lingtyp] orthography in formatted examples

Wed Mar 25 14:05:18 UTC 2020

Yes, punctuation and initial capitalization should be included, and names capitalized. By definition, when we write a language in a consistent way, we use an orthography.

(I think the older idea that languages which are not frequently used for writing by their speakers should be represented phonetically has become obsolete. We allowed it as one option in the WALS chapters, but most authors used punctuation and capitalization.)

This practice is also recommended by the Generic Style Rules (see §10: https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistics/past-research-resources/resources/generic-style-rules.html)

Best,
Martin

On 25.03.20 14:49, John Du Bois wrote:
Hi Christian,
Thanks for your thoughtful post.
     I would argue for including punctuation, because it may be significant as a representation of prosody, or it may serve as its near equivalent, either of which is meaningful. The current glossing conventions seem to carry the implicit assumption that language is purely segmental.
     You can even gloss the punctuation. For example, in Discourse Functional Transcription (DFT), a comma signals "continuing" intonation, while a period signals "final" intonation.
Best,
Jack

==============================
John W. Du Bois
Professor of Linguistics
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, California 93106
USA
dubois at ucsb.edu<mailto:dubois at ucsb.edu>

On Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 4:15 AM Christian Lehmann <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de<mailto:christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de>> wrote:

Dear colleagues,

here is a little methodological problem which some may dismiss as trivial but which needs to be solved if we care for standardizing linguistic methodology. It concerns the orthographic representation of linguistic data, esp. such as are provided with an interlinear gloss.

In the past decades, it has become customary in linguistic publications to omit punctuation in data which are formatted as examples and provided by a gloss, like this:

quo

usque

tandem

abutere

Catilina

patientia

nostra

whither

continually

finally

abuse:FUT:MID.2.SG<http://MID.2.SG>

Catilina:VOC.SG<http://VOC.SG>

patience(F):ABL.SG<http://ABL.SG>

our:F.ABL.SG<http://F.ABL.SG>

“ How far will you continue to abuse our patience, Catiline?” (Cic. Cat. I, 1)

The example is actually taken from a text; and there it is, of course, provided with initial capitalization, with commas in between and with a final question mark. Many of us have gotten accustomed to omitting these things in formatted examples. My own guidelines for interlinear glosses

(christianlehmann.eu/ling/ling_meth/ling_description/grammaticography/gloss/<http://christianlehmann.eu/ling/ling_meth/ling_description/grammaticography/gloss/>)

also recommend the omission. The practice seems inevitable for a representation of a piece of text which is not in orthography but in some more formal representation, say phonetic or morphophonemic. Here I am talking about orthographic representations.

There are some reasons for the practice of omitting punctuation and sentence-initial capitalization in glossed examples:

  1.  These orthographic marks may not figure in the original source:

     *   There is no published orthographic version which would need to be cited literally; it is just a transcription of a recording. Omission of punctuation signals this.

     *   The quoted stretch of text is not (necessarily) a sentence, be it in its original context, be it in the language system.

  1.  These orthographic marks would confuse the mapping of symbols structuring the interlinear gloss onto the original text line:

     *   Punctuation symbols like ‘.’, ‘:’ have a special function in glosses which they do not have in a fully orthographic text line. Others like ‘,’ and ‘!’ are inadmissible in the gloss. If such symbols appeared in the original text line, they would map on nothing in the gloss line.

     *   Punctuation symbols like ‘-’ should have the same function in the original text and in the gloss.

(Ad (1b): We are not talking about examples which are just syntagmas below clause level. In some linguistic publications, such examples are provided with a final full stop, too. This is plainly unthinking.)

Here are some reasons for abandoning the ban on punctuation and initial capitalization:

  1.  It makes the language exemplified appear as one which lacks an orthography, thus dangerously evoking the attitude towards „an idiom which does not even have a grammar“.

  2.  Punctuation, of course, fulfills a sensible function in established orthographies: it reflects the syntactic or prosodic structure of a piece of text. Omitting it from an example renders this less easily intelligible.

  3.  Whenever a linguistic example is, in fact, quoted from a text noted in established orthography, the quotation should be faithful, including the punctuation.

  4.  Current practice allows for exceptions to the principle of suppression of punctuation: at least question marks are commonly set.

You may know of more reasons for or against the practice of suppression of punctuation and of initial capitalization in linguistic examples, or you may be able to invalidate some of the above. I would be grateful for some discussion which helps to bring this closer to a recommendation that most of us could share and that would have a chance to find its way into style sheets.

Christian

--

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