[Lingtyp] orthography in formatted examples

[Peter Austin]

Dear colleagues

It seems to me that part of what Christian is alluding to is a failure on
the part of descriptive and documentary linguists to take transcription
(and orthographic representation) seriously and to come to some
agreements about how it should be handled in our various representational
schema. The "Leipzig glossing rules" don't discuss it and this lacuna gives
rise to conflicting practices, that Christian observes.

Epigraphers have thought long and hard about this matter and I would
recommend looking at their XML schema expressed in EpiDoc (
https://sourceforge.net/p/epidoc/wiki/Home/) to get some idea of how a
whole field can approach the matter of transcription -- they don't only
deal with punctuation, but also with things like "missing" elements,
corrections, spacing etc. The Discourse Functional Transcription (DFT)
mentioned by Jack Du Bois could be one basis for starting a proper
discussion going and getting some basic agreements among researchers in
place. They are sorely needed.

Best wishes,
Peter


On Wed, 25 Mar 2020 at 14:59, Françoise Rose <francoise.rose at univ-lyon2.fr>
wrote:

> 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
>
> Web:
>
> https://www.christianlehmann.eu
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>


-- 
Prof Peter K. Austin
Humboldt Researcher, Frankfurt University (Nov 2019, Jan-March 2020)
Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS
Visiting Researcher, Oxford University
Foundation Editor, EL Publishing
Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society

Department of Linguistics, SOAS
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square
London WC1H 0XG
United Kingdom
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20200325/ffeb0c73/attachment.htm>