[Lingtyp] orthography in formatted examples

[Paolo Driussi]

Dear colleagues

I am lost in  this discussion…

Are we speaking of interlinear glosses that  other linguists are going to analyse? If so, we can expect that the readers have a certain competence on the subject. For example they will never believe that

  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“.

(Lehmann 1st message)

On the other hand I have some doubts about the consistency of data presented in examples.
As for ancient languages: do we always have the original punctuation, or is there a later tradition? In this last case, it is possible that puctuation reflects the intonational uses of the writer.
And this point leads me to ask: why do we have punctuation? Official, established  uses in Italian, English and Hungarian, three languages that probably I know a little, are very different from each other.
To my knowledge only a few grammars and descriptions deal consistently with intonation. So what’s the point?
If the original text has its “official” punctuation, which does not necessarily mean it is standard!, we can keep it in the first line, and the scholar knows or imagines how it reflects on the other lines. But what about transcription of oral texts? are we sure that the transcription represents the original use in discourse, or rather it is the semplified version chosen by the author for the grammar? In how many cases the original intonation is not kept, as are not kept the discourse markers that are not part of the grammar?
Now: in some messages it sounds as  if  it were suggested that the orthographical signs should be kept in all the lines. If they are present in the first line, maybe they won’t disturb the transcriptional signs, do they? In the other lines they seem to be misleading.
And why should we capitalize Hebrew or Japanese names? Isn’t this a cultural question? If so, we can simply choose to help the reader, but this must be kept clear at the very beginning. After all when speaking we don’t have a different pronounciation for capital and lowercase letters.

On the other hand, we might start to reflect some guidelines for intonation, when necessary.

And just because we are speaking of capital letters: maybe we can discuss to find out a common convention for capitalising nouns in the titles of our articles.



Paolo Driussi
(L-LIN19 FIlologia ugrofinnica)

Università degli Studi di Udine
DIUM
Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici e del Patrimonio Culturale
via Mazzini, 3
I-33100 Udine (Italia)

tel. + 39 0432 556511

paolo.driussi at uniud.it<mailto:paolo.driussi at uniud.it>

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