Glosses

Glosses are explanations, translations, or annotations added to a text to clarify its meaning, form, or cultural context. They appear in manuscripts, marginalia, dictionaries, and linguistic annotations, serving readers who encounter unfamiliar words, grammatical forms, or concepts.

In linguistics, interlinear glossing attaches a line of morpheme-by-morpheme translations beneath a sentence. This method is common in fieldwork and language documentation, where the original text is aligned with gloss abbreviations (for example, 3SG or PERF) that encode grammatical information. Such glosses help researchers analyze morphology and syntax and enable readers to reconstruct the structure of the sentence.

Medieval and early modern manuscripts often contain glosses in the margins or between lines, explaining difficult vocabulary or grammatical constructions. These notes may be anonymous annotations or structured commentaries and can become part of textual commentary or later glossaries. Glosses in historical texts sometimes preserve earlier senses or regional usages that differ from the main text.

In lexicography, glosses provide concise definitions or equivalents for headwords, or they annotate senses within dictionaries and glossaries. They may indicate usage, dialect, or domain, and in bilingual works they bridge languages by giving immediate translations or explanations of terms.

Glossing conventions include standardized abbreviation systems; in linguistic work, the Leipzig Glossing Rules are widely used to ensure consistency across languages and descriptions. In historical contexts, glosses can preserve etymological information or trace semantic shifts over time. The practice aims to aid understanding and analysis, though it may reflect the glossator’s biases or gaps in knowledge. Modern glossing emphasizes transparency, reproducibility, and careful citation of sources.