A gloss (from Latin: glossa, from Greek: γλῶσσα glóssa "tongue") is a brief notation 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 glossary. A collection of medieval legal glosses, made by so-called 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 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, in which the meaning of a word or passage is explained. 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.
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[edit] In theology
Glosses and other marginal notes were a primary format used in medieval Biblical theology, and were studied and memorized for their own merit. Many Biblical passages came to be associated with a particular gloss, whose truth was taken to be scriptural.
[edit] In law
In the medieval legal tradition, the glosses on Roman law and Canon law created standards of reference, so-called sedes materiae (literally: 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.[1] Judicial glosses are often very important in avoiding contradictions between statutes, and determining the constitutionality of various provisions of law.
[edit] 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.
[edit] In philology
Glosses are of some importance in philology, especially if one language—usually, the language of the author of the gloss—has left few texts of its own. The Reichenau glosses, for example, gloss the Latin Vulgate Bible in an early form of one of the Romance languages, and as such give insight into late Vulgar Latin at a time when that language was not often written down. A series of glosses in the Old English language to Latin Bibles give us a running translation of Biblical texts in that language; see Old English Bible translations. Glosses of Christian religious texts are also important for our knowledge of 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.
[edit] In linguistics
In linguistics, a simple gloss in running text may be marked by quotation marks and follow the transcription of a foreign word. 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 requires an interlinear gloss. Such a gloss may 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.
A semi-standardized set of parsing conventions and grammatical abbreviations is explained in the Leipzig Glossing Rules.
[edit] Glossing signed languages
Sign languages are typically transcribed word-for-word by means of an English gloss written in all capitals. Prosody is often glossed as superscript English 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 and with a barely perceptible O.
[edit] Bibliography
- 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.
[edit] References
- ^ Black's Law Dictionary, 7th ed.