Learning to Gloss

[ekobor]

Hello there. I'm learning the rules of interlinear glossing (Leipzip rules) and would love some assistance where possible.
I'm also sure there are others on this board (from my searches for a thread like this) that would love to follow along and get some assistance also.

So I guess first things first. Resources I've found and am using.

First off the Leipzig Glossing Rules from the Max Planck Institute
Secondly the Wikipedia List of Glossing Abbreviations, useful as it links each one o further explanation.
Third: A cross examination of glossing terms



Now some examples of where I'm at. Warning, I'm not very far.
I'm doing all my glossing from and to English, because it is familiar and I am not yet confident enough to gloss another language...

I can do some simple SV sentences:

I ran
1SG run-PST

You ran
2SG run-PST

He ran
3SG run-PST


But then I start getting stuck

I ate chicken
1SG eat-PST chicken

The cat ran
the cat-SG run-PST

I ran over the hill
1SG run-PST over the hill



I guess what I want to know is, am I on the right track?

[ObsequiousNewt]

I think it's better to use ART.DEF for "the". Also, is the SG really necessary?

[ekobor]

Ah! These are things I wanted to know. I was trying to figure out "the" and having trouble.
So
I ate the chicken
1SG eat-PST ART.DEF chicken
?

Also, I'm not sure if the SG is necessary. It is true, they are singular...

[vec]

You only need to gloss distinctions made in the language. So if there's only a definite article, then ART or DEF is enough.

Regarding SG, if the singular is formed with a zero-morpheme, you may want to indicate the zero morpheme with Ø in the interlinear and then gloss as SG – or alternatively leave out both, depending on situations and what you're trying to illustrate.

Glosses can get confusing, so in general, you wanna try to be as minimal as you can. You'll want to know your grammatical minimal pairs, just like you would with phonemes. If a distinction is not made, then you do not gloss it. If the distinction is two-way and one of them is a zero-morpheme one, you may want to simply skip those altogether. And being internally consistent.

[ol bofosh]

I don't think it's necessary to gloss cat with SG.
For instance, Spanish:
gat-o
cat-MASC

We know <cat> is singular, so there's no need to mention it.

gat-o-s
cat-MASC-PL

Also, is the SG for <you> necessary?

[ekobor]

Okay, so if I were saying

the cat
ART.DEF cat

would be enough, but would need

the cats
ART.DEF cat-PL

?

(I left the DEF because "a" would be an ART.INDF , correct?)

[ObsequiousNewt]

Isn't it true that for strong verbs like "ate" you should use eat.PST instead of eat-PST?

[vec]

Okay, so if I were saying

the cat
ART.DEF cat

would be enough, but would need

the cats
ART.DEF cat-PL

?

(I left the DEF because "a" would be an ART.INDF , correct?)

You could also leave out ART and just use DEF and INDF, esp. if that category is only marked in the article. However, if say you have adjectives (for example) that agree in definiteness, then it's possible you'd have cases where you'd want to retain ART. I prefer leaving out ART, myself. I think it's usually uneccessary.

[ekobor]

You could also leave out ART and just use DEF and INDF, esp. if that category is only marked in the article. However, if say you have adjectives (for example) that agree in definiteness, then it's possible you'd have cases where you'd want to retain ART. I prefer leaving out ART, myself. I think it's usually uneccessary.

So, getting into something more complicated then,

The cat ran over the hill
DEF cat run.PST over DEF hill

or

The cat ran over the hill
DEF cat run.PST over.PREP DEF hill
?

[Whimemsz]

You don't need to define "over" as a preposition, unless the original language you're glossing somehow marks the word, morphologically, as a prepositions (say, for instance, there's one root that means "to be over" when used as a verb or just "over" when used as a preposition, and the latter is indicated by an extra suffix-- then "over-PREP" makes sense. But otherwise it's needless extra noise).

My general preference is to avoid overusing technical stuff except where necessary. If there's only one definite article in the language, I don't have a problem glossing it as "the", for example, rather than "DEF" (and you'll sometimes find papers and books that make the same choice) (as vec says, though, if definiteness is marked in places besides the article, then it makes more sense to use "DEF"). As long as the glosses are consistent, accurate, provide as much information as necessary, and immediately interpretable by the audience, then any additional information provided -- or any extra abbreviations or use of technical detail -- is a distraction. (For this reason, unless there's a reason to discuss Spanish's gender system, for instance, the normal way to gloss gato / gato-s would probably be cat / cat-PL). I had one conlang grammar where I started out with really really basic glosses, and in the section where I discussed some feature, the gloss for that feature would get more complex and detailed for the rest of the grammar onward (like, verbs would stop saying "they.ran" and start saying "PAST.SIMPLE-3PL-run" or whatever).

(Also, ObsNewt is correct that "ran" = "run.PST", with a period --- whereas "talk-ed" = "talk-PST", with a hyphen)

[ekobor]

Awesome, thank you.

I think I just get so intimidated by abbreviations that I over-think it...

[kodé]

You could also leave out ART and just use DEF and INDF, esp. if that category is only marked in the article. However, if say you have adjectives (for example) that agree in definiteness, then it's possible you'd have cases where you'd want to retain ART. I prefer leaving out ART, myself. I think it's usually uneccessary.

So, getting into something more complicated then,

The cat ran over the hill
DEF cat run.PST over DEF hill

or

The cat ran over the hill
DEF cat run.PST over.PREP DEF hill
?

You usually don't have to gloss syntactic category (i.e., PREP is not necessary, "over" is fine). The exception is if there is a morpheme that indicates syntactic category, in which case you have to gloss it. Which leads me to the bigger point, that in general you should show the breakdown of morphemes (since what you should be glossing is morphemes, not words). Here's an example for English:

The student's sister likes the boys who kicked the soccer balls into her grandparents' garden.
The student-'s sister like-s the boy-s who kick-ed the soccer ball-s into her grandparent-s-' garden.
DEF student-GEN sister like-3SG DEF boy-PL REL kick-PST DEF soccer ball-PL into 3FSG.GEN grandparent-PL-GEN garden

And here's an example for a more morphologically complex language, Western Armenian

usanoG-i-n k'uyr-@ d@Ga-k'-@ vor ir medzdznoGk-ner-i-n bardez-i-n mech vodnakunt-ner-@ ak'ats'-ets'-in g@-sir-e
student-GEN-DEF sister-DEF boy-PL-DEF REL 3SG.GEN grandparent-PL-GEN-DEF garden-DAT-DEF in soccer.ball-DEF-PL kick-PRET-3PL IND-like-3SG
"The student's sister likes the boys who kicked the soccer balls into her grandparents' garden"

For more morphologically complex languages, breaking down the morphemes is critical. Compared to (say) Athabaskan or Salishan languages, Armenian is morphologically simple. I can't imagine not provide a morpheme breakdown for those languages...

[gach]

For more morphologically complex languages, breaking down the morphemes is critical.

While this is in general very good advice, the rule can also be bent a bit in some cases to achieve more to the point glosses. Indicating all of the inflectional morphemes is typically required but doing the same for derivations is often just a distraction unless you are specifically talking about them. If you can replace explicit glosses of derived words just by practical translations without the point of the glossed example suffering from it, you probably should do so for the sake of readability.

For example, there rarely is need to indicate the derivational suffix -er in English actor nouns like painter and there certainly is no need to mention that the Finnish verb kävellä ("walk") actually carries a frequentative derivational affix -ele- in it except when actually talking about the affix itself.

[Yng]

A lot of the time it's not even necessary to mark all the inflectional morphemes. Especially in languages which are morphemically complex, it can be a pain to gloss everything when these elements of the gloss are not relevant. This is one of the optional uses of _ if I remember correctly. For example, when glossing Arabic, I might write:

tuktabu-hu
3sg.FEM-PASS/make_write=him
she is made to write it

Because I feel that here there is no need to write:

3sg.FEM.PRES-PASS/PRES/make_write-3sg.FEM.IND=3sg.MASC

Or:

al-ʾawlādu
DEF-boys

instead of

DEF-PL/boy-NOM.DEF

It all depends on what you are trying to demonstrate

[vec]

Yng makes a very good point. Like I said, keep it as minimal as you can.

Regarding a preposition like over, you can either gloss it as SUPL meaning "superlative" (not to be confused with the identically named adjectival degree) indicating it as a case marker meaning "motion over" or simply as over as you did. I don't think there's ever a case where you would closs over.PREP unless there's some overt (and preferably systematic, inflectional) morphological marker that distinguishes it from another type of word.

To pull an example from my conlang Imuthan, there are no adpositions but instead there are defective verbs called coverbs. Like normal verbs they have different function forms such as participle and supine but most importantly they have a form called transitive which roughly corresponds with the finite of verbs.

So a coverb like tên "in" has the participle form tênû "which is in" and the supine têss "inside":

del-es tên ê'morer
del=es tên ê=more-r
be=1S in DEF=house-OBL
I'm in the house

bin-tuo ê'dôlû tênûr ê'morer
bin=tuo tên-û-m ê=dôl-e ê=more-r
have=3S in-PTC-DAT DEF=man-DAT DEF=house-OBL
the man who's in the house has it

del-tuo têss
del=tuo tên-s
be=3S in-SUP
he's inside

[Ser]

gat-o
cat-MASC

We know <cat> is singular, so there's no need to mention it.

gat-o-s
cat-MASC-PL

(For this reason, unless there's a reason to discuss Spanish's gender system, for instance, the normal way to gloss gato / gato-s would probably be cat / cat-PL).

Actually, since gender is a property of nouns and is thus determined by them, I'd consider it inappropriate to gloss the -o of a noun as "MASC". Sure, there's an association of -o with masculine nouns, but not all nouns that end in -o are masculine. Fot-o "picture-FEM". I'd say this is appropriate for adjectives and such things with agreement, but as for nouns... well, this is the reason why you sometimes find noun gender marked with [] instead, like this:

• Estas fotos antiguas fueron tomadas todas muy lentamente.
  est-as foto-s antigu-as fueron tomad-as tod-as muy lentamente
  PROX-F.PL picture[F]-PL old-F.PL were taken-F.PL all-F.PL very slowly

As for the thread, notice how I just glossed fueron as "were" instead of be.AOR.3PL (or whatever), since the morphology of the verb is not important for my post.

[ol bofosh]

(For this reason, unless there's a reason to discuss Spanish's gender system, for instance, the normal way to gloss gato / gato-s would probably be cat / cat-PL).

Actually, since gender is a property of nouns and is thus determined by them, I'd consider it inappropriate to gloss the -o of a noun as "MASC". Sure, there's an association of -o with masculine nouns, but not all nouns that end in -o are masculine. Fot-o "picture-FEM". I'd say this is appropriate for adjectives and such things with agreement, but as for nouns... well, this is the reason why you sometimes find noun gender marked with [] instead, like this:.

I think in the case of <gato> it's fine to mark the -o as MASC (well, if it's important for the gloss, that is), because it can easily be replaced by its feminine counterpart: <gata>. Words like mapa, moto, foto and mano AFAIK don't have specific gender morphology, so in these cases it would be different.

Then there are other MASC words that end with -o and other FEM words that end with -a where it might not be appropriate. Perhaps palabra: it's a feminine word, and ends with -a, but since it can't be replaced with -o (MASC) to create another word I'm not sure if that -a should be glossed with FEM.

[Yng]

I'd class those as derivational rather than inflectional morphology the vast majority of the time and so irrelevant for glossing. Of course if you want to talk about how feminine equivalents for masculine nouns in -o can be derived by replacing the ending with -a then it's worth glossing, but most of the time I'd leave it.

[vec]

I'd class those as derivational rather than inflectional morphology the vast majority of the time and so irrelevant for glossing. Of course if you want to talk about how feminine equivalents for masculine nouns in -o can be derived by replacing the ending with -a then it's worth glossing, but most of the time I'd leave it.

Agreed.

[ekobor]

Okay, so gloss only where distinctions are made in the original language.
So

Big men eating smelly cheese
big man.PL eat.PRS smelly cheese

Houses are a long project to undertake, much like conlangs
house.PL be.PRS INDF long project to undertake, much like conlang.PL

Tu aimes la nourriture froid; pas moi.
2SG like.2SG ART.DEF.SG.FEM food cold ; not I
You like food cold; not me

?

[Rhetorica]

Big men eat-ing smelly cheese
big man.PL eat.PRS-PROG smelly cheese

[ol bofosh]

This has been a good resource for me.

Big men eat-ing smelly cheese
big man.PL eat.PRS-PROG smelly cheese

Or could it be eat-PRS.PROG, since <eat> could be the infinitive with -ing attached?

Also couldn't smelly be glossed as smelly-ADJ (smell-y)?

[Rhetorica]

Yeah, I thought about the smell-y part. But with eating it's a sentence fragment so we can't really say.

[gach]

Or could it be eat-PRS.PROG, since <eat> could be the infinitive with -ing attached?

Better not to put too much interpretation into the glosses but rather stick to indicating the relevant morphological distinctions with their generic labels and spare the grammatical interpretation into the discussion.

The -ing in eating is a gerund here so the best gloss will be eat-GER. Eat is the unmarked stem of the verb so it doesn't need any extra labelling. And since this is a nominal clause unspecified for absolute tense, sticking the label PRS here might be a bit misleading.

I know the last bit is a bit nitpicking. In the present participles I've seen the "present" actually refers to relative tense or even imperfectivity. If there's established terminology, it's often not worth it diverging from using it.

[Curlyjimsam]

I would advise that there is no single "correct" way to do glosses, and you ought to a large extent to be sensitive to the context. Generally, I at least would rather read English words than abbreviations of grammatical categories unless there's some specific reason to use the latter. So sometimes it might help to gloss the definite article as ART.DEF (or even just DEF), but in other contexts you might as well write "the" - if, for example, the meaning is pretty close to the meaning of the English anyway and the purpose of the example isn't actually anything to do with definite articles so it doesn't really matter. Likewise, there might be contexts in which it's better to gloss the first-person singular nominative pronoun as "I" rather than "1S.NOM". You might even at times want to do similarly for things like plurality and past tense - e.g. "men ran" instead of "man-PL run-PAST", though personally I would tend not to go that far very often.