There is a very well-defined set of standards for interlinear glossing in linguistics.
The better-known ones are described in the Leipzig Glossing Rules, which are considered more or less standard nowadays.
But how did those conventions come about?
On this page, we’ll look at some examples of linguistic glossing over history, and try to generalize over the forces which made glossing work as it does now. Additionally, we’ll try to make some inferences about how those historical forces should be translated into digital representations of interlinear glosses, and of linguistic annotation in general.
But how did those conventions come about?
Surprisingly, literature on both the history and methodology of glossing in linguistics is sparse, as Lehmann (1982) and Mosel (2006) note.
Interlinearized annotation of text, however, has a long history in multiple locations throughout the world. The origins of the practice are perhaps beyond recovery, and at any rate, the invention of the technique not have been unique.
The chronology of the history of glossing depends in large part on how we choose to define it. Lehmann describes Finck (1909) as "one of the first linguistic publications that illustrate the working of a language with a sizable text provided with a free translation and an IMG [interlinear morphological gloss]".
Surprisingly, literature on both the history and methodology of glossing in linguistics is sparse, as Lehmann (1982) and Mosel (2006) note. The origins of the practice are perhaps beyond recovery (and at any rate, the invention of the technique not have been unique). The chronology of the history of glossing depends in large part on how we choose to define it.
Lehmann describes Finck (1909) as “one of the first linguistic publications that illustrate the working of a language with a sizable text provided with a free translation and an IMG [interlinear morphological gloss]”.
(All but the sample sentence and its corresponding marginal free translation are grayed out.) The structure of this example is surprisingly modern-seeming given its publication date. Of particular interest is the division of every source word into distinct morphemes, and an attempt at glossing at the morpheme level, and not the word level.
sweet jeebus how do i do nested lists
And then the master threw all the clothes into the fire and burned them.