Leipzig Glossing Rules Modified For Uni Leipzig Students

All modifications have been made according to the guidelines provided by Sᴛɪᴇʙᴇʟs in the lecture Grammatikanalyse (Universität Leipzig, 2018). You can find the complete Leipzig Glossing Rules here. 

Rule 1: Word-by-word alignment

Interlinear glosses are left-aligned vertically, word by word, with the example.

(1)   Indonesian (Sneddon 1996:237)

Mereka	di	Jakarta	sekarang
they	in	Jakarta	now
‘they are in Jakarta now’

Rule 2: Morpheme-by-morpheme correspondence

Segmentable morphemes are separated by hyphens, both in the example and in the

gloss. There must be exactly the same number of hyphens in the example and in the

gloss.

(2)      Lezgian (Haspelmath 1993:207)

Gila	abur-u-n	ferma	hamišaluǧ	güǧüna	amuq’-da-č.
now	they-ᴏʙʟ-ɢᴇɴ	farm	forever	behind	stay-fᴜᴛ-ɴᴇɢ
‘Now their farm will not stay behind forever’

Since hyphens and vertical alignment make the text look unusual, authors may

want to add another line at the beginning, containing the unmodified text [...]

Clitic boundaries are marked by an equals sign, both in the object language and

in the gloss.

(3)   West Greenlandic (Fortescue 1984:127)

palasi=lu	niuirtur=lu
priest=and	shopkeeper=and
‘both the priest and the shopkeeper’

For languages with complex morpho-phonology both the phonological representation (PR) and the underlying representation (UR) should be indicated.

Rule 3: Grammatical category labels

Grammatical morphemes are generally rendered by abbreviated grammatical

category labels, printed in upper case letters (usually small capitals).

Deviations from these standard abbreviations may of course be necessary in particular cases, e.g. if a category is highly frequent in a language, so that a shorter abbreviation is more convenient, e.g. cpl (instead of compl) for "completive", pf (instead of prf) for "perfect", etc.  If a category is very rare, it may be simplest not to abbreviate its label at all.

In many cases, either a category label or a word from the metalanguage is

acceptable. Thus, both of the two glosses of (4) may be chosen, depending on the

purpose of the gloss.

(4)   Russian

My	s	Marko	poexa-li	avtobus-om	v	Peredelkino
1ᴘʟ	ᴄᴏᴍ	Marko	go-ᴘsᴛ.ᴘʟ	bus-ɪɴs	ᴀʟʟ	Peredelkino
we	with	Marko	go-ᴘsᴛ.ᴘʟ	bus-by	to	Peredelkino
‘Marko and I went to Peredelkino by bus’

Rule 4: One-to-many correspondences

When a single object-language element is rendered by several metalanguage

lements (words or abbreviations), these are separated by periods.

When several object-language elements (e.g. different phonological words) are rendered by one metalanguage element, they may be separated by # (Sᴛɪᴇʙᴇʟs 2018).

(5)   Examples

Turkish	Latin		Hypothetical example
çık-mak	insul-arum		kra#fuku-to-m
come.out-ɪɴf	island-ɢᴇɴ.ᴘʟ		come-ᴘʀs-1sɢ
‘to come out’	‘of the islands’		‘I come’

A "real" example might be German immer(#)noch which is rendered in English as still (Sᴛᴇɪɴᴍᴀɴɴ 2019).
Rule 4E. (Optional)

If a language has person-number affixes that express the agent-like and the patient-

like argument of a transitive verb simultaneously, the symbol ">" may be used in

the gloss to indicate that the first is the agent-like argument and the second is the

patient-like argument.

(6)   Jaminjung (Schultze-Berndt 2000:92)

nanggayan	guny-bi-yarluga?
who	2ᴅᴜ>3sɢ-fᴜᴛ-poke
‘who do you want to spear’?

Rule 5: Person and number labels

Person and number are not separated by a period when they cooccur in this order.

(7)   Italian

and-iamo

go-ᴘʀs.1ᴘʟ

‘we go’

Rule 6: Non-overt elements

If the morpheme-by-morpheme gloss contains an element that does not correspond

to an overt element in the example, it can be enclosed in square brackets. An

obvious alternative is to include an overt "Ø" in the object-language text, which is

separated by a hyphen like an overt element.

Sᴛɪᴇʙᴇʟs (2018): Whether it makes sense to indicate default categories like this is questionable, though. The Ø strategy should be avoided. It is also possible to proceed as in (8c).

(8)   Latin

	b. to be avoided!	c.
puer	puer-Ø	puer
boy[ɴᴏᴍ.sɢ]	boy-ɴᴏᴍ.sɢ	boy.ɴᴏᴍ
‘boy’	‘boy’	‘boy’

Rule 7: Inherent categories

Inherent, non-overt categories such as gender may be indicated in the gloss, but a

special boundary symbol, the round parenthesis, is used.

Sᴛɪᴇʙᴇʟs (2018): You can also indicate the boundary by using a period.

(9)   Hunzib (van den Berg 1995:46)

oz#-di-g	xõxe	m-uq'e-r
boy-ᴏʙʟ-ᴀᴅᴇ	tree(G4)	G4-bend-ᴘʀᴇᴛ
boy-ᴏʙʟ-ᴀᴅᴇ	tree.G4	G4-bend-ᴘʀᴇᴛ
‘because of the boy the tree bent’

Rule 8: Bipartite elements

Grammatical or lexical elements that consist of two parts which are treated as

distinct morphological entities (e.g. bipartite stems such as Lakhota na-xʔu̧ 'hear')

may be treated in two different ways: The gloss may simply be repeated or one of the two parts may be represented by a special label such as sᴛᴇᴍ / labelled as a lexical category (Sᴛɪᴇʙᴇʟs 2018)

(10)                      Lakhota

na-wíčha-wa-xʔu̧

hear-3ᴘʟ-ɪɴᴀᴄᴛ-1sɢ-ᴀᴄᴛ-hear

hear-3ᴘʟ-ɪɴᴀᴄᴛ-1sɢ-ᴀᴄᴛ-sᴛᴇᴍ

‘I hear them’

Circumfixes  should not be labelled as ᴄɪʀᴄ (as proposed by the Leipzig Glossing Rules), as this can be ambiguous when dealing with morphologically complex words. It is better to use indices:

(11)                      Hypothetical example:

ma-kuni-so-pu

ᴘʟi-house-ᴅɪᴍ-ᴘʟi

‘little houses’

Rule 9: Infixes

Infixes are enclosed by angle brackets, and so is the object-language counterpart in

the gloss. Infixes are generally easily identifiable as left-peripheral (as in 12a) or as right-

peripheral (as in 12b), and this determines the position of the gloss corresponding to

the infix with respect to the gloss of the stem. If the infix is not clearly peripheral,

some other basis for linearizing the gloss has to be found.

(12)                      Examples

Tagalog	(stem: bili)	b. Latin	(stem: reliqu-)
b<um>ili		reli<n>qu-ere
<ᴀᴄᴛfᴏᴄ>buy		leave<ᴘʀs>-ɪɴf

Rule 10: Reduplication

Reduplication is treated similarly to affixation, but with a tilde (instead of an

ordinary hyphen) connecting the copied element to the stem.

(13)                      Examples

Hebrew	b. Tagalog	c. Tagalog
yerak~rak-im	bi~bili	b<um>i~bili
green~ᴀᴛᴛ-ᴍ.ᴘʟ	ɪᴘfᴠ~buy	<ᴀᴄᴛfᴏᴄ>ɪᴘfᴠ~buy
‘greenish ones’	‘is buying’	‘is buying

Reduplication infixes are  indicated by a tilde and angle brackets:

(14)                      Koasati: Punctual Aspect

cofok	~<có:>	an
be.angled	~<ᴀsᴘ
‘be angled’

Other phenomena

Umlaut and Ablaut

(15)                      German

Umlaut		Ablaut
Mütter/	Mutter=UL	warf-st
mother.ᴘʟ	mother.ᴘʟ	throw\ᴘsᴛ-2sɢ

Truncation: There is no notation in the LGR