Glossing

Glossing is a linguistic practice in which a sentence from a language—often one with limited published grammar—is annotated with a line-by-line analysis of its morphemes and a translation. The goal is to reveal grammatical structure, enable cross-linguistic comparison, and aid the documentation and description of under-described languages.

The typical format, called interlinear glossed text (IGT), includes three lines: the original text, a morpheme-by-morpheme gloss using abbreviations for grammatical categories, and a free translation. Morpheme glosses are aligned with corresponding segments in the source text. Abbreviations usually follow established conventions; the Leipzig Glossing Rules are widely used as a standard.

Glossing is applied to both spoken and sign languages. In sign languages, glosses are often single words or concepts written in the surrounding spoken language and aligned to signs. It is common in field notes, grammars, and digital resources to include glossed texts for reproducibility and comparative study.

Benefits of glossing include clarifying morphological and syntactic structure, supporting language documentation and description, and providing a transparent data format for researchers and language communities. Limitations include the fact that glosses are abstractions and cannot capture all pragmatic, discourse, or idiomatic nuance. Morpheme boundaries and gloss choices can be subjective, and different analysts may propose alternative analyses. Despite these caveats, glossing remains a central tool in linguistic analysis and language documentation.