The Leipzig Glossing Rules: Conventions for interlinear morpheme-by-morpheme glosses

About the rules

The Leipzig Glossing Rules have been developed jointly by the Department of Linguistics of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Bernard Comrie, Martin Haspelmath) and by the Department of Linguistics of the University of Leipzig (Balthasar Bickel). They consist of ten rules for the "syntax" and"semantics" of interlinear glosses, and an appendix with a proposed "lexicon" of abbreviated category labels.

 List of Standard Abbreviations

1 first person

2 second person

3 third person

A agent-like argument of canonical transitive verb

ABL ablative

ABS absolutive

ACC accusative

ADJ adjective

ADV adverb(ial)

AGR agreement

ALL allative

ANTIP antipassive

APPL applicative

ART article

AUX auxiliary

BEN benefactive

CAUS causative

CLF classifier

COM comitative

COMP complementizer

COMPL completive

COND conditional

COP copula

CVB converb

DAT dative

DECL declarative

DEF definite

DEM demonstrative

DET determiner

DIST distal

DISTR distributive

DU dual

DUR durative

ERG ergative

EXCL exclusive

F feminine

FOC focus

FUT future

GEN genitive

IMP imperative

INCL inclusive

IND indicative

INDF indefinite

INF infinitive

INS instrumental

INTR intransitive

IPFV imperfective

IRR irrealis

LOC locative

M masculine

N neuter

N- non- (e.g. NSG nonsingular, NPST nonpast)

NEG negation, negative

NMLZ nominalizer/nominalization

NOM nominative

OBJ object

OBL oblique

P patient-like argument of canonical transitive verb

PASS passive

PFV perfective

PL plural

POSS possessive

PRED predicative

PRF perfect

PRS present

PROG progressive

PROH prohibitive

PROX proximal/proximate

PST past

PTCP participle

PURP purposive

Q question particle/marker

QUOT quotative

RECP reciprocal

REFL reflexive

REL relative

RES resultative

S single argument of canonical intransitive verb

SBJ subject

SBJV subjunctive

SG singular

TOP topic

TR transitive

VOC vocative

 

The rules

Rule 1: Word-by-word alignment

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

Paul schlaeft in seinem Bett.
Paul sleeps in his bed.

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. E.g.

Paul arbeite-t.
Paul work-3SG.PRS

Paul arbeite-te.
Paul work-3sg.PST

Rule 3: Grammatical category labels

Grammatical morphemes are generally rendered by abbreviated grammatical

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

standard abbreviations (which are widely known among linguists) is given at the

end of this document.

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 (5) may be chosen, depending on the

purpose of the gloss.

Paul schlaef-t nicht.
Paul sleep\-3SG NEG.

Rule 4: One-to-many correspondences

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

elements (words or abbreviations), these are separated by periods. E.g.

Turkish

çık-mak

come.out-INF

'to come out'

 

Latin

insul-arum

island-GEN.PL

'of the islands'

 

French

aux chevaux

to.ART.PL horse.PL

'to the horses'

If a grammatical property in the object-language is signaled by a

morphophonological change (ablaut, mutation, tone alternation, etc.), the backslash

is used to separate the category label and the rest of the gloss.

German (cf. 9)

unser-n Väter-n

our-DAT.PL father\PL-DAT.PL

'to our fathers' (cf. singular Vater)

 

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

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.

 Rule 5: Person and number labels

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

E.g.

Italian

and-iamo

go-PRS.1PL (not: go-PRS.1.PL)

'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.

Latin

puer or: puer-Ø

boy[NOM.SG] boy-NOM.SG

‘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. E.g.

Hunzib (van den Berg 1995:46)

oz#-di-g xõxe m-uq'e-r

boy-OBL-AD tree(G4) G4-bend-PRET

'Because of the boy the tree bent.'

(G4 = 4th gender, AD = adessive, PRET = preterite)

 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:

(i) The gloss may simply be repeated:

Lakhota

na-wíčha-wa-xʔu̧

hear-3PL.UND-1SG.ACT-hear

'I hear them' (UND = undergoer, ACT = actor)

(ii) One of the two parts may be represented by a special label such as STEM:

German

ge-seh-en or: ge-seh-en

PTCP-see-PTCP PTCP-see-CIRC

'seen' 'seen'

 Rule 9: Infixes

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

the gloss.

Latin

reli<n>qu-ere (stem: reliqu-)

leave<PRS>-INF

'to leave'

Infixes are generally easily identifiable as left-peripheral (as in 27) or as rightperipheral

(as in 28), 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.

 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.

Hebrew

yerak~rak-im

green~ATT-M.PL

'greenish ones' (ATT = attenuative)

Tagalog

bi~bili

IPFV~buy

'is buying'