The list provides conventional glosses as established by standard inventories of glossing abbreviations such as the Leipzig Glossing rules,[2] the most widely known standard. Synonymous glosses are listed as alternatives for reference purposes. In a few cases, long and short standard forms are listed, intended for texts where that gloss is rare or uncommon.
Conventions
Grammatical abbreviations are generally written in full or small caps to visually distinguish them from the translations of lexical words. For instance, capital or small-cap PAST (frequently abbreviated to PST) glosses a grammatical past-tense morpheme, while lower-case 'past' would be a literal translation of a word with that meaning. Similarly, (small) cap -DOWN might be a locative suffix used in nominal inflections, prototypically indicating direction downward but possibly also used where it is not translatable as 'down' in English, whereas lower-case 'down' would be a direct English translation of a word meaning 'down'.[3] Not all authors follow this convention.
Person-number-gender is often further abbreviated, in which case the elements are not small caps. E.g. 3ms or 3msg for 3SG.M, 2fp or 2fpl for 2PL.F, also 1di for 1DU.INCL and 1pe for 1PL.EXCL.[4][nb 2]
Authors may more severely abbreviate glosses than is the norm, if they are particularly frequent within a text, e.g. IP rather than IMM.PST for 'immediate past'. This helps keep the gloss graphically aligned with the parsed text when the abbreviations are longer than the morphemes they gloss. Such shortened forms may be ambiguous with other authors or texts and so are not presented as normative here. Glosses may also be less abbreviated than the norm if they are not common in a particular text, so as to not tax the reader, e.g. TRANSTVZR for 'transitivizer' or SUBJUNCT for 'subjunctive'. At the extreme, glosses may not be abbreviated at all but simply written in small caps, e.g. COMPLEMENTIZER, NONTHEME or DOWNRIVER rather than COMP, NTH, DR.[5] Such long, obvious abbreviationse.g. in [6] have been omitted from the list below, but are always possible.
A morpheme will sometimes be used as its own gloss. This is typically done when it is the topic of discussion, and the author wishes it to be immediately recognized in the gloss among other morphemes with similar meanings, or when it has multiple or subtle meanings that would be impractical to gloss with a single conventional abbreviation. For example, if a passage has two contrasting nominalizing suffixes under discussion, ɣiŋ and jolqəl, they may be glossed GN and JQ, with the glosses explained in the text.[7] This is also seen when the meaning of a morpheme is debated, and glossing it one way or another would prejudice the discussion.
Lexical morphemes are typically translated, using lower-case letters, though they may be given a grammatical gloss in small caps if they play a grammatical role in the text. Exceptions include proper nouns, which typically are not translated, and kinship terms, which may be too complex to translate. Proper nouns/names may simply be repeated in the gloss, or may be replaced with a placeholder such as "(name.F)" or "PN(F)" (for a female name). For kinship glosses, see the dedicated section below for a list of standard abbreviations.
Lehmann recommends that abbreviations for syntactic roles not be used as glosses for arguments, as they are not morphological categories. Glosses for case should be used instead, e.g. ERG or NOM for A.[8] Morphosyntactic abbreviations are typically typeset as full capitals even when small caps are used for glosses,[9] and include A (agent of transitive verb), B (core benefactive),[10] D or I (core dative / indirect object),[11] E (experiencer of sensory verb),[12] G or R (goal or recipient – indirect object of ditransitive verb),[13] L (location argument),[14] O or P (patient of transitive verb), S (single argument of intransitive verb), SA (Sa) and SP or SO (Sp, So) (agent- and patient-like argument in split-S alignment),[15] Se and Sx (argument of equative/copular and existential verb),[11] Su (subject of v.t. or v.i.),[11] and T (theme – direct object of ditransitive verb).[14]
These abbreviations are, however, commonly used as the basis for glosses for symmetrical voice systems (formerly called 'trigger' agreement, and by some still 'focus' (misleadingly, as it is not grammatical focus), such as AV (agent voice), BF (beneficiary 'focus'), LT (locative 'trigger').
Glosses for generic concepts like 'particle', 'infix', 'tense', 'object marker' and the like are generally to be avoided in favor of specifying the precise value of the morpheme.[8] However, they may be appropriate for historical linguistics or language comparison, where the value differs between languages or a meaning cannot be reconstructed, or where such usage is unambiguous because there is only a single morpheme (e.g. article or aspect marker) that can be glossed that way. When a more precise gloss would be misleading (for example, an aspectual marker that has multiple uses, or which is not sufficiently understood to gloss properly), but glossing it as its syntactic category would be ambiguous, the author may disambiguate with digits (e.g. ASP1 and ASP2 for a pair of aspect markers). Such pseudo-glossing may be difficult for the reader to follow.
Authors also use placeholders for generic elements in schematicized parsing, such as may be used to illustrate morpheme or word order in a language. Examples include HEAD or HD 'head'; ROOT or RT 'root'; STEM or ST 'stem'; PREF, PRFX or PX 'prefix'; SUFF, SUFX or SX 'suffix'; CLIT, CL or ENCL 'clitic' or 'enclitic'; PREP 'preposition' and POS or POST 'postposition', PNG 'person–number–gender element' and TAM 'tense–aspect–mood element' (also NG number–gender, PN person–number, TA tense–aspect, TAME tense–aspect–mood–evidential) etc.[2][16] These are not listed below as they are not glosses for morphological values.
Lists
Nonabbreviated English words used as glosses are not included in the list below. Caution is needed with short glosses like AT, BY, TO and UP, which could potentially be either abbreviations or (as in these cases) nonabbreviated English prepositions used as glosses.
Transparent compounds of the glosses below, such as REMPST or REM.PST 'remote past', a compound of REM 'remote' and PST 'past', are not listed separately.
Abbreviations beginning with N- (generalized glossing prefix for non-, in-, un-) are not listed separately unless they have alternative forms that are included. For example, NPSTnon-past is not listed, as it is composable from N-non- + PSTpast. This convention is grounded in the Leipzig Glossing Rules.[2] Some authors use a lower-case n, for example nH for 'non-human'.[16]
Some sources are moving from classical lative (LAT, -L) terminology to 'directional' (DIR), with concommitant changes in the abbreviations. Other authors contrast -lative and -directive.[17]
Some sources use alternative abbreviations to distinguish e.g. nominalizer from nominalization,[18] or shorter abbreviations for compounded glosses in synthetic morphemes than for independent glosses in agglutinative morphemes.[19] These are seldom distinct morphosyntactic categories in a language, though some may be distinguished in historical linguistics. They are not distinguished below, as any such usage tends to be idiosyncratic to the author.
Punctuation and numbers
Conventional Gloss
Variants
Meaning
Reference
-
separator for segmentable morphemes, e.g., Lezgian amuq’-da-č (stay-FUT-NEG) "will not stay"
[optional in place of hyphen] separator for clitics, e.g., West Greenlandic palasi=lu niuirtur=lu (priest=and shopkeeper=and) "both the priest and the shopkeeper"
when a morph is rendered by more than one gloss, the glosses are separated by periods, e.g., French aux chevaux (to.ART.PL horse.PL) "to the horses" A period is not used between person and number, e.g. 1PL, 2SG, 1DU, 3NSG (nonsingular).
[optional in place of period] when the language of the gloss lacks a one-word translation, a phrase may be joined by underscores, e.g., Turkish çık-mak (come_out-INF) "to come out" With some authors, the reverse is also true, for a two-word phrase glossed with a single word.
[optional in place of period] direction of polypersonal agreementin a single gloss, whether (a) possession (1S›SG means 1S possessor and singular possessum) or (b) transitivity (2›3 means 2 acts on 3, as in guny-bi-yarluga (2DU›3SG-FUT-poke) "(who) do you two want to spear?" A colon is used by some authors: 1S:SG, 2DU:3SG-FUT-poke.
[optional in place of period] separates glosses where segmentation is irrelevant (morphemes may be segmentable, but author does not wish to separate them)
[optional in place of period] separates glosses that are combined in a portmanteau morpheme, as in aux chevaux (to;ART;PL horse;PL) "to the horses". Some authors use the colon indiscriminately for this convention and the previous.[24]
alternative meanings of ambiguous morpheme, e.g. 2/3 for a morpheme that may be either 2nd or 3rd person, or DAT/GEN for a suffix used for both dative and genitive.
[optional in place of period] a morpheme indicated by or affected by mutation, as in Väter-n (father\PL-DAT.PL) "to (our) fathers" (singular form Vater)
[optional in place of period] indicates unmarked element (such as fils (son[MSG], which has no suffix for MSG). The null suffix -∅ may be used instead.
[optional in place of hyphens] marks off a circumfix or bipartite stem. The second element may be glossed the same as the first, or as CIRC, STEM or $: ge⟩lauf⟨en⟨PART.PRF⟩run ge⟩lauf⟨enPART.PRF⟩run⟨PART.PRF ge⟩lauf⟨enPART.PRF⟩run⟨CIRC ge-lauf-enPART.PRF-run-PART.PRF ge-lauf-enPART.PRF-run-CIRC
third person (3SG.M or 3msg or 3ms; 3PL.F or 3fpl or 3fp; 3DU.N or 3ndu or 3nd; N3 or n3 non-3rd person) [occasionally 3sm, 3sn, 3sf, 3pm, 3pn, 3pf etc.][36]
inclusive, exclusive person (especially if not thought of as a form of 1pl) (rarely other digit compounds, e.g. 12 dual vs 122 plural inclusive, 33 vs 333 for 3du vs 3pl, etc.)
older and younger: 1SG> 'I' (speaker older than addressee), 2SG≤ 'you' (speaker addressing addressee of same age or younger), 3SG> 's/he' (referent older than (a) speaker or (b) addressee, depending on requirements of discourse)
same and different generations: 3DU≠ 'they two' (of different generations, e.g. grandchild and great-grandchild), 1PL= 'we' (of same generation, e.g. me and my siblings)
from. May be equivalent to ABESS or ABL. Compounded for ABE(SS), ABL(AT), ABEL etc. if a single morpheme, as AB-ESS, AB-LAT or AB-DIR, AB-ELA etc. if not.
near, by. May be equivalent to ADESS or ALL. Compounded for ADE(SS), (irregular ALL), ADEL etc. if a single morpheme, as AD-ESS, AD-LAT, AD-ELA etc. if not.
in front of. May be equivalent to ANTESS or ANTL. Compounded for ANTE(SS), ANTL(AT), ANTEL etc. if a single morpheme, as ANT-ESS, ANT-LAT, ANT-ELA etc. if not.
near, in the vicinity of. May be equivalent to APUDESS or APUDL. Compounded for APUDE(SS), APUDL(AT), APUDEL etc. if a single morpheme, as APUD-ESS, APUD-LAT, APUD-ELA etc. if not.
auxiliary verb Per Lehmann (2004), this should only be used if it uniquely identifies the morpheme (i.e., there is only one auxiliary morpheme in the language.)[8]
'compass', in languages where relative position is based on cardinal direction rather than left, right, front and behind (ABLC compass ablative, ALLC compass allative)
classifier (base or morpheme) (NCLnoun class). Some distinguish CLF classifier from CLclass marker.[23] The category of classifier should be specified,[8] e.g. "CLF:round"[95] or "CLF.HUM"[8]
on a vertical surface. (From English contact.) May be equivalent to CONTESS or CONTL(AT). Compounded for CONTE(SS), CONTL(AT), CONTEL etc. if a single morpheme, as CONT-ESS, CONT-LAT or CONT-DIR, CONT-ELA etc. if not.
in a container. May be equivalent to INESS or INL. Compounded for INE(SS), INL(AT), INEL etc. if a single morpheme, as IN-ESS, IN-LAT, IN-ELA etc. if not.
within (a solid object). May be equivalent to INTERESS or INTERL. Compounded for INTERE(SS), INTERL(AT), INTEREL etc. if a single morpheme, as INTER-ESS, INTER-LAT, INTER-ELA etc. if not.
personal (PERS.EV personal evidential / personal experience, PERS.AG personal agency, PERS.EXP personal experience); personal/proper article (= PERS.ART); 'personal' affix (= 4th person)
postlocative (behind). May be equivalent to POSTESS or POSTL. Compounded for POSTE(SS) (POESS), POSTL(AT) (PODIR), POSTEL (POEL) etc. if a single morpheme, as POST-ESS, POST-LAT or POST-DIR, POST-ELA etc. if not.
sublocative (under). May be equivalent to SUBESS or SUBL. Compounded for SUBE(SS) (SBESS), SUBL(AT) (SBDIR), SUBEL (SBEL) etc. if a single morpheme, as SUB-ESS, SUB-LAT or SUB-DIR, SUB-ELA etc. if not.
superlocative. May be equivalent to SUPERESS or SUPERL. Compounded for SUPERE(SS) (SUPESS), SUPERL(AT) (SUPDIR), SUPEREL (SUPEL), SUPERABL etc. if a single morpheme, as SUPER-ESS, SUPER-LAT or SUPER-DIR, SUPER-ELA etc. if not.
(a) translative case (becoming, into); (b) translocative (across; may be compounded for e.g. ANT-TRANS pass in front of, POST-TRANS pass behind, SUB-TRANS pass under)
It is common to abbreviate grammatical morphemes but to translate lexical morphemes. However, kin relations commonly have no precise translation, and in such cases they are often glossed with anthropological abbreviations. Most of these are transparently derived from English; an exception is 'Z' for 'sister'. (In anthropological texts written in other languages, abbreviations from that language will typically be used, though sometimes the single-letter abbreviations of the basic terms listed below are seen.) A set of basic abbreviations is provided for nuclear kin terms (father, mother, brother, sister, husband, wife, son, daughter); additional terms may be used by some authors, but because the concept of e.g. 'aunt' or 'cousin' may be overly general or may differ between communities, sequences of basic terms are often used for greater precision. There are two competing sets of conventions, of one-letter and two-letter abbreviations:[141][142][48][24][143]
e.g. GF = PF (MF or FF); GS = CS (SS or DS) e.g. GrFa = PaFa (MoFa or FaFa); GrSo = ChSo (SoSo or DaSo)
Gen
generation
(see below)
H
Hu
husband
[basic term]
LA
La
-in-law
e.g. BLA = WB or HB or ZH / BrLa = WiBr or HuBr or SiHu
M
Mo
mother
[basic term]
M
male kin
Ne
nephew
= BrSo or SiSo
Ni
niece
= BrDa or SiDa
P
Pa
parent
= M or F / Mo or Fa
S
So
son
[basic term]
SI, G
Sb
sibling
= B or Z / Br or Si
SP, E
Sp
spouse
= H or W / Hu or Wi
st
step-
U
Un
uncle
= MB or FZ / MoBr or FaBr
W
Wi
wife
[basic term]
y, Y
y, yo
younger
(e.g. yB, yZ)
Z
Si
sister
[basic term]
(m.s.)
(m.s.)
male speaking
(when kin terms differ by gender of speaker)
(f.s.)
(f.s.)
female speaking
(when kin terms differ by gender of speaker)
μ
♂
male ego
(when kin terms differ by gender of the person they are related to)
φ
♀
female ego
(when kin terms differ by gender of the person they are related to)
∥
∥
parallel
(across a brother–brother or sister–sister link)
+
+
cross
(across a brother–sister link)
os
os
opposite sex (of ego)
(some langs distinguish siblings of the same and opposite gender from the ego; e.g. for some Tok Pisin speakers, a woman's susa (osSb, from English 'sister') is her brother and her brata (ssSb, from English 'brother') is her sister)
ss
ss
same sex (as ego)
cf. os (opposite sex) above
These are concatenated, e.g. MFZS = MoFaSiSo 'mother's father's sister's son', yBWF = yBrWiFa 'younger brother's wife's father'. 'Elder/older' and 'younger' may affix the entire string, e.g. oFaBrSo (an older cousin – specifically father's brother's son), MBDy (a younger cousin – specifically mother's brother's daughter) or a specific element, e.g. MFeZS 'mother's father's elder sister's son', HMeB 'husband's mother's elder brother'.
'Gen' indicates the generation relative to the ego, with ∅ for the same (zero) generation. E.g. Gen∅Ch (child of someone in the same generation, i.e. of a sibling or cousin); ♂Gen+1F (female one generation up, i.e. mother or aunt, of a male); Gen−2M (male two generations down, i.e. grandson or grandnephew).
'Cross' and 'parallel' indicate a change or lack of change in gender of siblings in the chain of relations. Parallel aunts and uncles are MoSi and FaBr; cross-aunts and uncles are FaSi and MoBr. Cross-cousins (+Cu) and parallel cousins (∥Cu) are children of the same. Parallel niece and nephew are children of a man's brother or woman's sister; cross-niece and nephew are the opposite. 'Elder' and 'younger' occurs before these markers: o∥Cu, y+Cu, and the gender of the ego comes at the very beginning, e.g. ♂o∥CuF, ♀y+CuM.
Summary of case forms: Blake, Barry J. (2001) [1994]. Case (Second ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 195–206.
Notes
^The transcription and glossing of sign languages is in its infancy. Glossing is typically a sign-by-sign translation with almost no grammatical parsing. Some of the few standardized conventions are: A— (sign A held in its final position) A#B (A and B signed simultaneously) A^B (host-clitic combination) ____t (non-manual marking for topic) ____y/n (non-manual marking for polar question) IX or INDEX (3rd-person referents / pointing signs)[1]
^3SG.N should be fully abbreviated to 3ns, rather than to *3nsg, to avoid confusion with 3NSG (3 non-singular).
^For instance in Paulus Kieviet (2017) A grammar of Rapa Nui, where textual abbreviations such as A, S, O, DO are set in full caps, contrasting with interlinear glosses in small caps. Full capital N and V are also used for 'noun' and 'verb', A/M 'aspect/mood marker', PND 'post-nominal demonstrative, QTF 'quantifier', SVC 'serial verb construction', etc.
^ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxIrina Nikolaeva & Maria Tolskaya (2001) A Grammar of Udighe. Mouton de Gruyter.
^ abcdefghijkJohn Du Bois, Lorraine Kumpf & William Ashby (2003) Preferred Argument Structure
^ abcdeRyan Pennington (2016) A grammar of Ma Manda: a Papuan language of Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea
^ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzMichael Piotrowski (2015) Systems and Frameworks for Computational Morphology. Fourth International Workshop, SFCM 2015, Stuttgart, Germany, September 17–18, 2015. Proceedings.
^ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvTasaku Tsunoda & Taro Kageyama, eds. (2006) Voice and Grammatical Relations: In Honor of Masayoshi Shibatani
^ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvRandy LaPolla & Rik de Busser (2015) Language Structure and Environment Social, p 80ff, 109.
^ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuDesmond Derbyshire & Geoffrey Pullum (2010) Handbook Amazonian Languages
^ abcdefghijklMary Swift (2004) Time in Child Inuktitut: A Developmental Study of an Eskimo–Aleut Language
^ abcdefghiTimothy Feist (2010) A Grammar of Skolt Saami
^ abcdefghijklmWilliam Foley (1986) The Papuan Languages of New Guinea, Cambridge University Press
^ abcdefghiG. Authier & T. Maisak, eds. (2011) Tense, mood, aspect and finiteness in East Caucasian languages. Brockmeyer, Buchum.
^ abDiana Forker (2019) Elevation as a category of grammar: Sanzhi Dargwa and beyond
^Dianne Jonas, John Whitman, Andrew Garrett (2012) Grammatical Change: Origins, Nature, Outcomes
^ abcdefghijklmBlake, Barry J. (2001) [1994]. Case (Second ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
^ abcdefgChristian Lehmann, G. E. Booij, Joachim Mugdan, Stavros Skopeteas, Wolfgang Kesselheim (2000) Morphologie: Ein Internationales Handbuch Zur Flexion und Wortbildung. Volume 2.
^ abcdefghijklmnoLeonid Kulikov, Andrej Malchukov, Peter De Swart (2006) Case Valency And Transitivity. John Benjamins.
^ abcdefghijklmnopqrPatricia Hofherr & Brenda Laca (2012) Verbal Plurality and Distributivity
^ abcdefghijklmnopqrHans-Martin Gärtner, Joachim Sabel, Paul Law (2011) Clause Structure and Adjuncts in Austronesian Languages. De Gruyter.
^ abcdFay Wouk & Malcolm Ross, eds. (2002) The historical and typological development of westernAustronesian voice systems. Pacific Linguistics, Canberra
^ abcdefgGuillaume Jacques (2024) Celerative: the encoding of speed in verbal morphology
^ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuJoan Bybee, Revere Perkins, William Pagliuca (1994) The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World
^Andrea Berez-Kroeker, Carmen Jany, Diane M. Hintz (2016) Language Contact and Change in the Americas
^ abcdefghijklVolker Gast (2012) Clause Linkage in Cross-Linguistic Perspective. De Gruyter Mouton.
^Doke, Clement M. (1935). Bantu Linguistic Terminology. London, UK: Longmans, Green, and Co.
^ abcdPatience Epps and Lev Michael (2019) Amazonian Languages, An International Handbook. de Gruyter Mouton
^Yu, Alan C. L. (August 21, 2006), A natural history of infixation, p. 34
^ abcdefGabriele Diewald & Ilse Wischer (2002) New Reflections on Grammaticalization
^ abcdefghPaulus Kieviet (2017) A grammar of Rapa Nui (Studies in Diversity Linguistics 12), Berlin.
^Nicoletta Romeo (2008) Aspect in Burmese: Meaning and function
^ abcdefghijEsther Pascual (2014) Fictive Interaction: The conversation frame in thought, language, and discourse
^ abcdefghijklmnDiana Forker, Information structure in the languages of the Caucasus, submitted to Polinsky (ed.) Handbook of Caucasian languages, OUP.
^ abcdefgFelix Ameka, Alan Dench, Nicholas Evans (2006) Catching Language: The Standing Challenge of Grammar Writing. De Gruyter.
^ abcdefLaura McPherson (2013) A Grammar of Tommo So
^ abHsuan-Chih Chen (1997) Cognitive Processing of Chinese and Related Asian Languages
^Till Woerfel (2018) Encoding Motion Events: The Impact of Language-Specific Patterns and Language Dominance in Bilingual Children. De Gruyter.
^Working paper of the Cognitive Anthropology Research Group of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, 1991
^Richard Oehrle, E. Bach, Deirdre Wheeler (2012) Categorial Grammars and Natural Language Structures
^Isabelle Bril (2021) Experiential constructions in Northern Amis, ICAL-15
^ abcdAustralian Aboriginal Studies. Journal of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Issue 1, 1994, p. 32
^Edzard, Dietz Otto (2003), Sumerian Grammar, Handbook of Oriental Studies, p. 112
^Miller, Douglas B.; Shipp, R. Mark (2014), An Akkadian Handbook
^Rik van Gijn & Jeremy Hammond (2016) Switch Reference 2.0, p 222.
^ abSeventh Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, March 27–31, 1995, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin, Ireland. Association for Computational Linguistics, European Chapter, 1995.
^Abbott, Clifford (Summer 1984). "Two feminine genders in Oneida". Anthropological Linguistics. 26 (2): 125–137. JSTOR30027499.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
^Both sets of glosses appear in Jeffrey Heath (1980) Dhuwal (Arnhem Land) Texts on Kinship and Other Subjects. University of Sydney.
^Philip Kreyenbroek (2009) From Daēnā to Dîn. Harrassowitz.
^Lu, Tian Qiao (2008) A Grammar of Maonan. Boca Raton, Florida: Universal Publishers.