[Lingtyp] orthography in formatted examples

Wed Mar 25 14:58:27 UTC 2020

Dear all,
It seems most grammars of languages without a written tradition do use punctuation (although minimal) in the examples, if those are full sentences. Capitalization maybe less systematically, probably for the reason that Katharina has mentioned. “,” are important sometimes to get an idea of the prosody, and the syntactic structure, and I use “…” a lot to mark errors and hesitations.
I don’t see the problem of punctuation symbols being also used in the gloss line: in different lines, the same symbols have different meanings (and a different distribution anyway: “.” Is always used after a word (i.e. before a space) in the example line and within the gloss in a gloss line). The only problem me or my students have been confronted with is when the “-“ is used in the orthography. If in the gloss line, I usually replace it with “_”, as in “grand_père”. If in the example line, I don’t have an ideal solution.
Nice to have this discussion !
Keep safe,
Françoise

De : Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> De la part de Christian Lehmann
Envoyé : mercredi 25 mars 2020 12:15
À : LINGTYP LINGTYP <LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Objet : [Lingtyp] orthography in formatted examples

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

Catilina:VOC.SG

patience(F):ABL.SG

our: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/)

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:

a.     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.

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

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

a.     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.

b.     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
--

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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