Gloss (annotation)

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A gloss is a notation regarding the main text in a document. Shown is a parchment page from the Royal Library of Copenhagen.

A gloss is a brief notation, especially a marginal or interlinear one, of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text or in the reader's language if that is different.

A collection of glosses is a

glossators, is called an apparatus. The compilation of glosses into glossaries was the beginning of lexicography, and the glossaries so compiled were in fact the first dictionaries. In modern times a glossary, as opposed to a dictionary, is typically found in a text as an appendix of specialized terms that the typical reader may find unfamiliar. Also, satirical explanations of words and events are called glosses. The German Romantic movement used the expression of gloss for poems commenting on a given other piece of poetry, often in the Spanish Décima
style.

Glosses were originally notes made in the margin or between the lines of a text in a classical language; the meaning of a word or passage is explained by the gloss. As such, glosses vary in thoroughness and complexity, from simple marginal notations of words one reader found difficult or obscure, to interlinear translations of a text with cross references to similar passages. Today parenthetical explanations in scientific writing and technical writing are also often called glosses. Hyperlinks to a glossary sometimes supersede them.

Etymology

Starting in the 14th century, a gloze in the English language was a marginal note or explanation, borrowed from French glose, which comes from medieval Latin glōsa, classical glōssa, meaning an obsolete or foreign word that needs explanation.[1] Later, it came to mean the explanation itself. The Latin word comes from Greek γλῶσσα 'tongue, language, obsolete or foreign word'.[2][3] In the 16th century, the spelling was refashioned as gloss to reflect the original Greek form more closely.[4]

In theology

Main article: Biblical gloss

Glosses and other marginal notes were a primary format used in medieval Biblical

Nestle-Aland
.

In law

See also: Glossator

In the medieval legal tradition, the glosses on

Canon law created standards of reference, so-called sedes materiae 'seat of the matter'. In common law countries, the term "judicial gloss" refers to what is considered an authoritative or "official" interpretation of a statute or regulation by a judge.[5] Judicial glosses are often very important in avoiding contradictions between statutes, and determining the constitutionality
of various provisions of law.

In literature

A gloss, or glosa, is a verse in traditional

Iberian literature and music which follows and comments on a refrain (the "mote"). See also villancico
.

In philology

Castilian language
.

Glosses are of some importance in

Old Irish. Glosses frequently shed valuable light on the vocabulary of otherwise little attested languages; they are less reliable for syntax, because many times the glosses follow the word order of the original text, and translate its idioms
literally.

In linguistics

Main article: Interlinear gloss

In linguistics, a simple gloss in running text may be marked by quotation marks and follow the transcription of a foreign word. Single quotes are a widely used convention.[6] For example:

  • A
    Cossack
    longboat is called a chaika 'seagull'.
  • The moose gains its name from the Algonquian mus or mooz ('twig eater').

A longer or more complex transcription may rely upon an interlinear gloss. Such a gloss may be placed between a text and its translation when it is important to understand the structure of the language being glossed, and not just the overall meaning of the passage.

Glossing sign languages

Sign languages are typically transcribed word-for-word by means of a gloss written in the predominant oral language in all capitals; for example, American Sign Language and Auslan would be written in English. Prosody is often glossed as superscript words, with its scope indicated by brackets.

[I LIKE]NEGATIVE [WHAT?]RHETORICAL, GARLIC.
"I don't like garlic."

Pure fingerspelling is usually indicated by hyphenation. Fingerspelled words that have been lexicalized (that is, fingerspelling sequences that have entered the sign language as linguistic units and that often have slight modifications) are indicated with a hash. For example, W-I-K-I indicates a simple fingerspelled word, but #JOB indicates a lexicalized unit, produced like J-O-B, but faster, with a barely perceptible O and turning the "B" hand palm side in, unlike a regularly fingerspelled "B".

References

  1. Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary
    , s.v.
  2. Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, Henry Stuart Jones, A Greek–English Lexicon, s.v.
  3. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, First Edition, s.v.
  4. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, First Edition, s.v.
  5. ^ Black's Law Dictionary, 7th ed.
  6. ^ Campbell, Lyle (1998). Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (1 ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. p. xvii.

Further reading

  • Meinolf Schumacher: "…der kann den texst und och die gloß. Zum Wortgebrauch von 'Text' und 'Glosse' in deutschen Dichtungen des Spätmittelalters." In 'Textus' im Mittelalter. Komponenten und Situationen des Wortgebrauchs im schriftsemantischen Feld, edited by Ludolf Kuchenbuch and Uta Kleine, 207–27, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006 (PDF).

External links

  • The dictionary definition of gloss at Wiktionary
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