GlossSyntax

GlossSyntax is a lightweight, human-readable specification and data-interchange format intended for lexical data used in linguistic annotation and natural language processing workflows. It models lexical entries with lemmas, parts of speech, senses and glosses, example sentences, and grammatical features, and supports cross-entry references, inflection data, and language metadata. The format aims to balance readability with machine-processability for dictionary-building and annotation pipelines.

The syntax centers on entry blocks that declare a word and its linguistic information. Each entry includes fields such as lemma, pos, senses, features, and examples. Senses carry a gloss, an identifier, and optional usage notes. The features map encodes grammar-related attributes like number, gender, case, or mood. GlossSyntax is designed to serialize to JSON, YAML-like representations, or XML-oriented schemas.

An example entry for the English word cat might appear as:

entry("cat") {

lemma: "cat";

pos: "Noun";

senses: [

{ id: "cat#01", gloss: "a small domesticated carnivorous mammal", examples: ["The cat slept on the mat."], features: { number: "singular" } }

];

inflection: { plural: "cats" }

}

This example illustrates core elements: lemma, part of speech, a sense with gloss and example, and inflection data.

GlossSyntax was proposed in academic contexts in the mid-2010s as an open standard for compact lexical data interchange. It draws on lexicographic markup traditions and aims to complement TEI Lexical Entries and existing lexical databases by providing a concise syntax for lexical fields. Several parsers and converters exist, enabling export to JSON, RDF, or XML as part of annotation pipelines.

See also Lexical markup language, TEI Lexical Entries, and lexical databases.