How do I make a gloss?

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Not Napoleon
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How do I make a gloss?

Post by Not Napoleon »

The question is fairly straight forward. I've seen glosses, of course, but have never even attempted to make one. The problem is, I think, I don't even know what half of my conlang would be considered, grammatically. I just make a word, describe its grammatical function in about a paragraph or two, and refer back as needed.

Describing sentence structure practically requires writing an essay.

It would be useful if somebody could gloss a few English sentences, for examples.
Lìm shya cuâcua to'an wi

You are an unbreakable melon.
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Micamo
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Re: How do I make a gloss?

Post by Micamo »

Glossing a metalanguage back into itself is a largely useless exercise, but here's what it looks like:

The sun shone
DEF sun shine;PST

The kitten-s play-ed in the woods
DEF kitten-PL play-PST in DEF woods
My pronouns are <xe> [ziː] / <xym> [zɪm] / <xys> [zɪz]

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GrandPiano
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Re: How do I make a gloss?

Post by GrandPiano »

Micamo wrote:woods
woods
Shouldn't this be:

wood-s
wood-PL
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Micamo
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Re: How do I make a gloss?

Post by Micamo »

GrandPiano wrote:
Micamo wrote:woods
woods
Shouldn't this be:

wood-s
wood-PL
IMD at least, "woods" is grammatically singular. See:

The woods is a scary place
?The woods are a frightening place
My pronouns are <xe> [ziː] / <xym> [zɪm] / <xys> [zɪz]

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GrandPiano
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Re: How do I make a gloss?

Post by GrandPiano »

I see what you mean. That didn't occur to me before. (IMD = In My Dialect?)
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Micamo
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Re: How do I make a gloss?

Post by Micamo »

GrandPiano wrote:(IMD = In My Dialect?)
Yes.
My pronouns are <xe> [ziː] / <xym> [zɪm] / <xys> [zɪz]

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Re: How do I make a gloss?

Post by Sglod »

Not Napoleon wrote:The question is fairly straight forward. I've seen glosses, of course, but have never even attempted to make one. The problem is, I think, I don't even know what half of my conlang would be considered, grammatically. I just make a word, describe its grammatical function in about a paragraph or two, and refer back as needed.

Describing sentence structure practically requires writing an essay.

It would be useful if somebody could gloss a few English sentences, for examples.
Have a look at this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_g ... reviations

Also, maybe look at the Translations section of this forum and look at the glosses there. [:D]
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Re: How do I make a gloss?

Post by Curlyjimsam »

Note that, depending on the situation, glosses don't always have to be that technical. If your language has a definite article which is very close in function to English "the", it wouldn't be unreasonable to gloss it as "the" instead of "DEF". Or if it's not important for the point you're making that a word meaning "cats" can be divided into constituent morphemes "cat-PL" (or whatever), you might just want to gloss it as "cats".

The Leipzig Glossing Rules, easily discovered via a Google search, give various common glossing conventions and also contain a list of common abbreviations.
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Iyionaku
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Re: How do I make a gloss?

Post by Iyionaku »

A few basic ones that might be helpful:

An underbar ( _ ) usally connects words that are more than one word in the target language, but a single one in the source language.

Example (German)

Schiffskapitänsmütze
Ship_captain's_hat

A hyphen ( - ) connects segregable affixes in a single word.

Example (French)

Poisson-s
fish-PL

A period ( . ) connects non-segregable grammatical categories within a single affix, clitic or particle.

Example (Latin)

dom-ōs
house-PL.ACC

Those are the very basic ones used by nearly everyone on this board (although more or lest consequent; it appears that many conlangers here have fit in the conventions very well for their own languages; especially users of agglutinative languages don't seem to differ between a period and a hyphen in many cases).

A few useful grammatical affixes you might find useful (note that most people tend not to mark zero-marked categories like Singular and nominative case)

1SG, 2SG, 3SG, 1PL, 2PL, 3PL: The basic persons (I, you, he/she/it, we you, they); your language might have different ones

SG = Singular (often omitted apart from personal pronouns)
PL = Plural
DU = Dual

NOM = Nominative case (often omitted)
GEN = Genitive case
DAT = Dative case
ACC = Accusative case
ERG = Ergative case
ABS = Absolutive case

PRS = Present tense
PST = Past tense
PERF = Perfect tense
FUT = Future tense

PERF = perfective aspect
IMPF = imperfective aspect
PROG = progressive aspect
HAB = habituative aspect

NEG = negative

DEF = definite (often used for definite articles)
INDEF = indefinite (see before)

BE = 'be' verb (can be divided into COP = copula and EXIST = existential 'be' if your language does so)

PAS = Passive voice
AP = Antipassive voice

1SG.POSS = Possessive pronoun
1SG.REFL = Reflexive pronoun
DEM = Demonstrative (either pronoun or article)
PROX = proximal
DIST = distal

Find the ones that fit best in your language. I hope I could help a bit [:)]
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Re: How do I make a gloss?

Post by mira »

Iyionaku wrote:1SG, 2SG, 3SG, 1PL, 2PL, 3PL: The basic persons (I, you, he/she/it, we you, they); your language might have different ones
How would I differ between the inclusive "we" 1PL and the exclusive "we" in which the listener is not included?
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Keenir
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Re: How do I make a gloss?

Post by Keenir »

OTheB wrote:
Iyionaku wrote:1SG, 2SG, 3SG, 1PL, 2PL, 3PL: The basic persons (I, you, he/she/it, we you, they); your language might have different ones
How would I differ between the inclusive "we" 1PL and the exclusive "we" in which the listener is not included?
answer in bold.
:)

INCL and EXCL, if memory serves. not sure if you'd have to do 1PL2EXCL for that, though. (1PL.EXCL2 ?)
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Re: How do I make a gloss?

Post by mira »

Keenir wrote:
OTheB wrote:
Iyionaku wrote:1SG, 2SG, 3SG, 1PL, 2PL, 3PL: The basic persons (I, you, he/she/it, we you, they); your language might have different ones
How would I differ between the inclusive "we" 1PL and the exclusive "we" in which the listener is not included?
answer in bold.
:)

INCL and EXCL, if memory serves. not sure if you'd have to do 1PL2EXCL for that, though. (1PL.EXCL2 ?)
That helps, now what about if both the singular and plural 2nd person are achieved with the same word/affix? Do we put the marker that it means in that specific case? Or is there a general one?
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Dormouse559
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Re: How do I make a gloss?

Post by Dormouse559 »

Keenir wrote:INCL and EXCL, if memory serves. not sure if you'd have to do 1PL2EXCL for that, though. (1PL.EXCL2 ?)
You would just write 1PL.INCL or 1PL.EXCL. Clusivity by definition only involves the addressee, so no need to note it.

For your most recent question, OTheB, when a single form could have one of multiple meanings, you can use a general term, if such a thing is possible for the meanings. Or you can write whichever meaning is meant in that case. It depends on what the point of that particular gloss is. To write "second person" with no number implications, just write "2" (the same with the other person indicators: 1, 2, 3, 4 …)
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Re: How do I make a gloss?

Post by Keenir »

OTheB wrote:
Keenir wrote:
OTheB wrote:
Iyionaku wrote:1SG, 2SG, 3SG, 1PL, 2PL, 3PL: The basic persons (I, you, he/she/it, we you, they); your language might have different ones
How would I differ between the inclusive "we" 1PL and the exclusive "we" in which the listener is not included?
answer in bold.
:)
INCL and EXCL, if memory serves. not sure if you'd have to do 1PL2EXCL for that, though. (1PL.EXCL2 ?)
That helps, now what about if both the singular and plural 2nd person are achieved with the same word/affix? Do we put the marker that it means in that specific case? Or is there a general one?
well, if you're making a table...you put the same word/affix in the slot for Singular1 and Singular2.
At work on Apaan: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4799
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