glossing abbreviations list

[Vardelm]

I don't know if anyone will find this useful or even interesting, but I created a list of terms used in glossing with an abbreviation for each. The original file is here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 1h/pubhtml

So.... why?

The main objective is that almost all of the abbreviations have 3 letters. The only ones that don't are for person and word classes. There's a little OCD part of me that HATES seeing glosses with combinations of 1, 2, 3, and 4 letters. I like the consistency of 3 letters as much as possible. I tried to use standard abbreviations where those are 3 letters.

Secondly, I wanted to have abbreviations that were unique to every single term. Since I'm working on 4 conlangs with the plan to create descendants, I'd like to have consistency across those grammars as much as possible. Is IMP the imperative, imperfect, imperfective, impersonal, or imprecative? Yeah, the individual grammar would state which, but for my own sanity (mostly) and that of any hypothetical future readers, it seems simpler to use the same scheme across all my conlangs.

I'm sure I'll be updating it, but here's the list so far:

noun class	C##	agreement
abessive	ABE	case
ablative	ABL	case
absolutive	ABS	case
accusative	ACC	case
addessive	ADE	case
adelative	ADL	case
adverbial	ADV	case
agentive	AGT	case
allative	ALL	case
antessive	ANT	case
apudessive	APE	case
aversive	AVR	case
benefactive	BEN	case
causal	CSL	case
comitative	COM	case
comparative	CMP	case
dative	DAT	case
delative	DEL	case
distributive	DIS	case
egressive	EGE	case
elative	ELA	case
equative	EQU	case
ergative	ERG	case
essive	ESS	case
exessive	EXE	case
formal	FRM	case
genitive	GEN	case
identical	IDE	case
illative	ILL	case
inessive	INE	case
initiative	INI	case
instructive	IST	case
instrumental	INS	case
intransitive	INT	case
intrative	ITT	case
lative	LAT	case
limitative	LIM	case
locative	LOC	case
nominative	NOM	case
objective	OBJ	case
orientative	ORI	case
ornative	ORN	case
partitive	PRT	case
patientive	PAT	case
pegative	PEG	case
perlative	PEL	case
pertingent	PER	case
possessed	PSD	case
possessive	PSS	case
postelative	PSL	case
postessive	PSE	case
prepositional	PRP	case
privative	PRI	case
prolative	PRL	case
prosecutive	PRS	case
revertive	REV	case
semblative	SEM	case
sociative	SOC	case
subessive	SBE	case
sublative	SBL	case
substitutive	SUB	case
superessive	SPE	case
superlative	SPL	case
temporal	TMP	case
terminative	TER	case
translative	TRA	case
vialis	VIA	case
vocative	VOC	case
Classifier	CL	classifier
definite	DEF	determination
distal	DST	determination
indefinite	IND	determination
medial	MED	determination
proper article	PPR	determination
proximal	PRX	determination
zero article	ZRO	determination
Noun	N	noun
collective	COL	number
distributive plural	DSP	number
dual	DUA	number
paucal	PAC	number
plural	PLR	number
plurative	PLT	number
quadral	QUA	number
singular	SNG	number
singulative	SGT	number
superplural	SPP	number
trial	TRI	number
1st person	1P	agreement
2nd person	2P	agreement
3rd person	3P	agreement
4th person	4P	agreement
obviative	OBV	agreement
accidental	ACI	aspect
attenuative	ATT	aspect
cessative	CES	aspect
continuative	CNT	aspect
continuous	CON	aspect
defective	DFC	aspect
delimitative	DLM	aspect
discontinuous past	DCP	aspect
durative	DUR	aspect
episodic	EPI	aspect
experiential	EXP	aspect
frequentative	FRQ	aspect
generic	GNR	aspect
gnomic	GNO	aspect
habitual	HAB	aspect
imperfect	IPF	aspect
imperfective	IPV	aspect
inceptive	INC	aspect
inchoative	ICH	aspect
ingressive	ING	aspect
intensive	ITN	aspect
intentional	INL	aspect
iterative	ITR	aspect
moderative	MOD	aspect
momentane	MOM	aspect
pausative	PAU	aspect
perfect	PRF	aspect
perfective	PRV	aspect
progressive	PRG	aspect
prospective	PSP	aspect
protractive	PTR	aspect
punctual	PNC	aspect
resumptive	RES	aspect
segmentative	SEG	aspect
stative	STA	aspect
assumptive	ASM	evidential
firsthand	FRH	evidential
hearsay	HRS	evidential
indirect	IDR	evidential
inferential	INF	evidential
inferential - gen knowledge	INK	evidential
inferential - physical evidence	INP	evidential
inferential - similar experience	INX	evidential
non-visual	NVS	evidential
non-witness	NWT	evidential
quotative	QUO	evidential
reportative	REP	evidential
seconhand	SCH	evidential
sensory	SEN	evidential
thirdhand	THH	evidential
visual	VIS	evidential
witness	WIT	evidential
aggressive	AGG	mood
alethic	ALE	mood
benedictive	BND	mood
commissive	CMS	mood
conditional	CND	mood
debitive	DEB	mood
declarative	DEC	mood
deductive	DED	mood
deliberative	DLB	mood
deontic	DEO	mood
desiderative	DES	mood
directive	DIR	mood
dubitative	DUB	mood
dynamic	DYN	mood
energetic	ENR	mood
epistemic	EPT	mood
eventive	EVN	mood
hortative	HOR	mood
hypothetical	HYP	mood
imperative	IMP	mood
imprecative	IPC	mood
indicative	IDC	mood
inferrential	INF	mood
injunctive	INJ	mood
intentive	ITV	mood
interrogative	IRG	mood
irrealis	IRR	mood
jussive	JUS	mood
mirative	MIR	mood
necessitative	NEC	mood
oblique	OBL	mood
optative	OPT	mood
permissive	PRM	mood
potential	POT	mood
precative	PRC	mood
prohibitive	PRH	mood
propositive	PPS	mood
realis	REA	mood
renarrative	REN	mood
speculative	SPC	mood
subjunctive	SUB	mood
volitive	VLT	mood
affirmative	AFF	polarity
negative	NEG	polarity
positive	POS	polarity
aorist	AOR	tense
crastinal	CRA	tense
future	FUT	tense
future in the past	FPA	tense
hesternal	HES	tense
historical	HIS	tense
hodiernal	HOD	tense
near future	NRF	tense
near past	NRP	tense
non-future	NFU	tense
non-past	NPA	tense
past	PST	tense
pluperfect	PLP	tense
preterite	PRE	tense
remote future	RMF	tense
remote past	RMP	tense
simple past	SPA	tense
simple present	SPR	tense
transitive	TRN	transitivity
Verb	V	verb
active	ACT	voice
adjutative	ADJ	voice
antipassive	ANP	voice
applicative	APP	voice
causative	CAU	voice
circumstantial	CIR	voice
impersonal	IPR	voice
mediopassive	MDP	voice
middle	MID	voice
neuter	NEU	voice
passive	PAS	voice
reciprocal	REC	voice
reflexive	REF	voice

[Travis B.]

Somehow I feel that a mention of the Leipzig glossing rules would not be out of place here.

[Vardelm]

Somehow I feel that a mention of the Leipzig glossing rules would not be out of place here.

Indeed, it would not!

I'll go through their list to see how far off I am, but a quick scan is triggering that OCD bit in me.

[bradrn]

Somehow I feel that a mention of the Leipzig glossing rules would not be out of place here.

…or of Wikipedia’s glossing abbreviations list, for times when Leipzig doesn’t have a category you need.

[Jonlang]

Personally, I used SNG for 'singular' and SNGV for 'singulative'. Also, because two of my conlangs have initial consonant mutations I use the MUT-\ to show it. The dash is followed by S, A, N, or L for soft, aspirate, nasal, and liquid, but that's very specific for my own needs, I think. A gloss with MUT-S\wolf.sngv would therefore show that the word for 'wolf' is in the singulative (as opposed to collective) and has undergone soft mutation.

[vegfarandi]

Just my two cents but I find that the three-letter limitation, while perhaps neater looking, hinders easy comprehension. For instance, with something as uncommon as speculative, I'd always prefer SPEC to SPC. Just looking over the list, I find many of your proposed abbrevations unecessarily confusing from this limitation. CONT is much easier to parse than CNT. Not sure any language would be described as having both a continuative and a continuous – if there were two similar imperfective TAM categories like that in a language, it would be much better to find another name for one of the categories to avoid confusion. Therefore either term can be glossed as CONT (and I'd always include the T, because so many things start with con-).

[fusijui]

vegfarandi beat me to it -- I wanted to make a similar comment. Different lengths of tags helps me disambiguate them when reading quickly. Especially given that block caps are already less distinct from each other. I can't imagine how dealing with it is for someone with even mild dyslexia.

(Side note: typing this, I had to stop for a moment and try to remember the word 'dyslexia', because I could only come up with 'aphasia'. HA!)

[Vardelm]

Also, because two of my conlangs have initial consonant mutations I use the MUT-\ to show it. The dash is followed by S, A, N, or L for soft, aspirate, nasal, and liquid, but that's very specific for my own needs, I think. A gloss with MUT-S\wolf.sngv would therefore show that the word for 'wolf' is in the singulative (as opposed to collective) and has undergone soft mutation.

I've seen that glossing should generally be morphological information rather than phonological or word classes. Usually then you wouldn't (as an exmaple) gloss every adverb as .ADV unless you had some affix that make the word an adverb. I would lean towards showing consonant mutations in a different way: not sure what. The Celtic langs have some indications of mutation in orthography, but not always. It's a bit tricky since they can make a word look quite different. I'll have to tackle this as well for my Dwarvish lang once I fully work out the mutations.

Just my two cents but I find that the three-letter limitation, while perhaps neater looking, hinders easy comprehension. For instance, with something as uncommon as speculative, I'd always prefer SPEC to SPC. Just looking over the list, I find many of your proposed abbrevations unecessarily confusing from this limitation. CONT is much easier to parse than CNT.

From my point of view, more letters would almost always allow easier comprehension. Why not have a consistent 4-letter system, which would allow the added comprehension with the neatness? Personally, I like brevity as well, but 2 letters are too few to be unique, but 3 letters can be. 3-letter abbreviations seems like the sweet spot.

Not sure any language would be described as having both a continuative and a continuous – if there were two similar imperfective TAM categories like that in a language, it would be much better to find another name for one of the categories to avoid confusion.

Hmm... a conlang that needs to have both continuative and continuous (and not other names) sounds like a conlanging challenge. (Not a particularly exciting one, but still...)

vegfarandi beat me to it -- I wanted to make a similar comment. Different lengths of tags helps me disambiguate them when reading quickly. Especially given that block caps are already less distinct from each other. I can't imagine how dealing with it is for someone with even mild dyslexia.

This is an interesting look into how different people perceive & process visual information. The consistent 3 letters feels easier to me because I can always look for the same number. I find that single letter glosses get lost in the noise of longer glosses.

[Jonlang]

Also, because two of my conlangs have initial consonant mutations I use the MUT-\ to show it. The dash is followed by S, A, N, or L for soft, aspirate, nasal, and liquid, but that's very specific for my own needs, I think. A gloss with MUT-S\wolf.sngv would therefore show that the word for 'wolf' is in the singulative (as opposed to collective) and has undergone soft mutation.

I've seen that glossing should generally be morphological information rather than phonological or word classes. Usually then you wouldn't (as an exmaple) gloss every adverb as .ADV unless you had some affix that make the word an adverb. I would lean towards showing consonant mutations in a different way: not sure what. The Celtic langs have some indications of mutation in orthography, but not always. It's a bit tricky since they can make a word look quite different. I'll have to tackle this as well for my Dwarvish lang once I fully work out the mutations.

I got the idea from the book The Syntax of Welsh by Borsley, Tallerman, and Willis.

[Travis B.]

vegfarandi beat me to it -- I wanted to make a similar comment. Different lengths of tags helps me disambiguate them when reading quickly. Especially given that block caps are already less distinct from each other. I can't imagine how dealing with it is for someone with even mild dyslexia.

This is an interesting look into how different people perceive & process visual information. The consistent 3 letters feels easier to me because I can always look for the same number. I find that single letter glosses get lost in the noise of longer glosses.

I am with vegfarandi and fusijui on this - having tags all be the same length makes them too monotonous, whereas differing lengths helps me to pick out individual tags while glancing over a gloss.

[fusijui]

I do get what Vardelm's saying. Perhaps we just experience different 'friction' when quickly reading interlinearized text -- for me, it's not spotting the tags against a background of glosses, but differentiating the tags from one another (again, when skimming or looking for a specific item).