Applying Leipzig glossing rules

[anne tamm]

Dear Laci, Riho, and other fellow interlinear glossers,

Thank you for broaching this problem and raising awareness about the issue! Someone could collect these observations, and why not, a workshop on this topic is more than welcome. It would be nice to have a list of abbreviations that can be copy-pasted, slightly modified and improved if you write an article. It is even nicer if the lists are "mutually intelligible" and compatible with many purposes, such as automatic text processing. 

However, I would not argue for the necessity of a normative approach only. Many authors may use different glosses for the same morphemes, and do so for very good reasons. Solutions are necessary for those occations as well. 

1. For instance, if I talk to an audience of general lingusits, I use ACC for one group of the Estonian object cases. In the Estonian tradition I would use GEN or NOM, and if I need to talk to interface or semantics audience, I use TOT (for total objects). 
2. In addition, the glossing tradition changes. 
3. And how about the diachronic and dialect data? Sometimes there are several glosses in one article for what is now the morpheme VAT in Estonian. Some examples reflect its origin as a partitive marked personal present participle, others reflect its status as an infinitive, or quotative, epistemic modal marker, or an indirect evidential. 

In sum, while it is important to strive for unity, there could be solutions for diversity as well. For the first option, there is a workspace and website that each of you can access and edit,

http://glossing.pbworks.com/

And as a possible solution for the second option, one could add to each of his or her articles and papers a link to a web document explaining the individual deviations from the Leipzig glossing rules. As an example, I am sharing with you the list that I have applied for Uralic cases:

http://www.dipfilmod-suf.unifi.it/upload/sub/tamm/UralicCaseLeipzig.doc

I am using this occasion to ask your opinion and suggestions about the Uralic Typolgy Pages

http://uralictypology.pbworks.com/

Greetings from the first rainy autumn day in Budapest,

Anne Tamm
anne.tamm at unifi.it


--- On Fri, 10/9/09, Fejes László <fejes.laszlo at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Fejes László <fejes.laszlo at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Applying Leipzig glossing rules
> To: rgruntha at mappi.helsinki.fi
> Cc: ura-list at helsinki.fi
> Date: Friday, October 9, 2009, 10:56 PM
> Dear Riho, dear Collegues,
> 
> it was a great pleasure for me to read Riho's letter
> because he
> discusses problems I have also faced. Following the Leipzig
> Glossing
> Rules is a good practice to avoid the inconsistency of
> glossing we can
> find in the literature on Uralic languages. However, the
> LGR give just
> the basic rules, which means it is highly underspecified
> which gives
> us freedom and which consequently leads to chaos again.
> 
> I think Riho and his seminar's suggestions are quite
> reasonable and I
> could not argue in favour of any other way of glossing,
> except for a
> minor and alternative way of glossing zero morph(eme)s. I
> think
> grammatical categories which cannot be linked to any
> surface morph
> could be given in brackets if the unmarkedness is to be
> stressed, cf.
> 
> North Saami
> (5)     Dasgo ii oktage olmmoš
> dahkkojuvvo vanhurskkisin
>        for NEG.3SG anyone human
> do-PASS(-CONNEG) righteous-ESS
>        ‘No one will be made
> righteous…’
> 
> Mari
> (6a)    tyške tol!
>        this-LAT come(-IMP.2SG)
>        ‘Come here!’
> 
> (6b)    tyške ot tol mo?
>        this-LAT NEG-2SG
> come(-CONNEG) Q
>        ‘Won’t you come
> here?’
> 
> However, this variant, although equal to the one suggested
> by Riho,
> reflects another way of thinking about morphology (a more
> traditional
> structuralist way).
> 
> In addition to the problems mentioned by Riho, LGR lack to
> suggest
> glosses for many morphological phenomena existing in Uralic
> languages,
> e.g. for cases. Therefore, it would be useful to form a
> small group
> which should elaborate a more specific glossing system for
> Uralic
> languages which all the researchers could follow. This
> project would
> be similar to the earlier projects for the unification and
> simplification Finno-Ugric transcription in the seventies.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> László Fejes
> 
> 
> 2009/10/9  <rgruntha at mappi.helsinki.fi>:
> > Dear Uralicists,
> >
> > yesterday, we had a discussion on Leipzig glossing
> rules
> > (http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php)
> at the PhD
> > seminar of our department. After launching this
> encoding principle the
> > typologists maintain that, as in linguistic research
> in general, the
> > glossing rules should be adapted to individual
> languages only by taking into
> > account language-specific characteristics. This
> recommendation is very
> > flexible and gives the research of individual
> languages full freedom to make
> > case-specific applications when and where-ever needed.
> However, we discussed
> > a couple of more general questions in the light of the
> Uralic language
> > family and tried to find applied glossing rules that
> would be acceptable for
> > as many Uralic languages as possible. Given that doing
> research on Uralic
> > languages would be more consistent, if shared
> principles were applied
> > according to common rules in the research of the same
> languages, we tried to
> > find subsequent principles to be followed.
> >
> > Firstly (A), OBJECT CONJUGATION is morphologically one
> of the most complex
> > categories in those languages that have it. The
> Leipzig glossing rules (Rule
> > 4, examples (11 and 19)) suggest that there are two
> alternative ways to
> > encode morphosyntacically cumulative forms.
> Accordingly, the Erzya example
> > (1a-b) can be glossed in two ways:
> >
> > (1a)    rivez'  s'ovn-i-z'e            
> ver'giz'-en'
> >        fox     abuse-PRET-3SG.A.3SG.P  wolf-GA
> >        ‘The fox abused the wolf.’ (MSFOu 84:
> 279)
> >
> > (1b)    rivez'  s'ovn-i-z'e     ver'giz'-en'
> >        fox     abuse-3SG>3SG   wolf-GA
> >        ‘The fox abused the wolf.’ (MSFOu 84:
> 279)
> >
> > (GA = genitive-accusative (genitive in the position of
> object))
> >
> > The previous one (1a) follows the linear encoding
> principle but is robust
> > and implies that the agent-like and patient-like
> constituent are segmentable
> > at least at a semantic level. In our group the latter
> one (1b) was
> > considered as the better alternative from the
> viewpoint of many Uralic
> > languages, because it is more explicit and shows the
> hierarchy between the
> > agent-like (subject) and patient-like (object)
> consituent. However, it is
> > often the case that if the object is morphologically
> distinguishable as it
> > may be in the languages of Siberia, it is located
> before the agent-
> > (subject-)marking morpheme, on its left side.
> >
> > Consequently, from the viewpoint of morphology it
> would make more justice,
> > if the arrow | > | was turned around | < |. This
> should work both for
> > Mordvinic (examples 2a-c), Ugric (Mansi in example
> (3), Hungarian in example
> > (4)) and Samoyedic. There is also the point that the
> Ob-Ugric and Samoyedic
> > languages distinguish between the number of the object
> (SG/DU/PL) but not
> > the person.
> >
> > Erzya
> > (2a)    kunda-si-n'ek
> >        catch-3SG-1PL (alternatively
> catch-3PL-1PL)
> >        ‘We catch her/him/them.’
> >
> > (2b)    kunda-sin'ek
> >        catch-3SG<1PL (alternatively
> catch-3PL<1PL)
> >        ‘We catch her/him/them.’
> >
> > (2c)    rivez'  s'ovn-i-z'e                
>     ver'giz'-en'
> >        fox     abuse-3SG<3SG   wolf-GA
> >         ‘The fox abused the wolf.’ (MSFOu 84:
> 279)
> >
> > Mansi
> > (3)     am tuw towləγtasum, nooŋx ti puuγaslum
> >        I there wing-FREQ-PRET-1SG, up this
> catch-PRET-SG<1SG
> >        ‘I rowed there fast, I caught it up.’
> (Kálmán 1976: 81)
> >
> > Hungarian
> > (4)     lát-lak
> >        see-2SG<1SG
> >        ‘I see you.’
> >
> > We tested the same applied glossing principle on
> Nenets, but unfortunately,
> > here I have to leave it to specialists of the
> Samoyedic languages to make
> > the test publicly. Note that in Erzya the glossing
> with hyphens in example
> > (2a) is problematic, because -n'ek (1PL) is
> segmentable, whereas -si
> > actually does not match with 3SG nor 3PL one to one.
> >
> >
> > Secondly (B), connegative forms of verbs are seldom
> marked overtly. The
> > Leipzig glossing rules, for instance, do not include
> an abbreviation for
> > connegative forms. However, in the Uralic languages
> the connegative verb
> > form often diverges from the verb stem and could
> therefore be encoded.
> > Moreover, the connegative usually corresponds to
> imperative 2SG forms that,
> > in practice, always have to be encoded. So, in our
> view the connegative
> > should be encoded as well as in the North Saami (5)
> and Mari (6a-b)
> > examples.
> >
> > North Saami
> > (5)     Dasgo ii oktage olmmoš dahkkojuvvo
> vanhurskkisin
> >        for NEG.3SG anyone human do-PASS.CONNEG
> righteous-ESS
> >        ‘No one will be made righteous…’
> >
> > Mari
> > (6a)    tyške tol!
> >        this-LAT come.IMP.2SG
> >        ‘Come here!’
> >
> > (6b)    tyške ot tol mo?
> >        this-LAT NEG-2SG come.CONNEG Q
> >        ‘Won’t you come here?’
> >
> > In sum, we found these conclusions useful and
> acceptable for the glossing of
> > those languages we are concerned with. We look forward
> to the feedback of
> > other Uralicists and your comments on both the
> suggested applying principles
> > and the applicability of Leipzig glossing rules in
> general.
> >
> > With best regards from Helsinki!
> >
> > Riho Grünthal
> > Department of Finno-Ugrian Studies
> > P.O.Box 24 (Unioninkatu 40)
> > FI-00014 University of Helsinki
> >
> >
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