Morfemgloss

Morfemgloss is the practice of providing a gloss for each morpheme in a linguistic data excerpt. It is also known as a morpheme gloss and is a key component of interlinear glossed text (IGT), used to show how a word’s internal structure maps onto grammatical categories or meanings. In a typical glossing setup, a sentence is presented with at least three aligned lines: the original sentence, a morpheme-by-morpheme segmentation (often with morpheme boundaries marked by hyphens), and a gloss line that labels each morpheme with a concise abbreviation or phrase. A fourth line may display a natural translation.

Gloss abbreviations commonly follow standard conventions such as the Leipzig Glossing Rules. Examples of glosses include 1SG, 3PL, NEG, ACC, DAT, PL, and aspects or tenses like PRET, IMP, or FUT. The gloss line is not a translation; it encodes grammatical or semantic information that helps researchers compare languages at the morpheme level.

Example:

Original: evlerimizde

Morphemes: ev - ler - imiz - de

Gloss: house-PL-1PL-LOC

Free translation: in our houses

Morfemgloss supports documentation, language description, and reproducibility, but it can be challenging for languages with highly fused morphology or ambiguous segmentation. Clear segmentation decisions and consistent glossing conventions are essential for reliable cross-language comparison.