The linguistic example
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David J. Weber
Abstract
Good language descriptions liberally illustrate their claims with examples. The author must select and order examples, and provide accompanying information. The example may include a reference number, the example in multiple forms (phonetic, phonemic, morphemic or morphophonemic, written), brackets and categories, glosses, translation, punctuation, functional annotations, grammatical judgements, subscripts, empty categories, ellipses marking, information about the author and language variety, attention-directing mechanisms, and so forth. Formatting these diverse sorts of information is a non-trivial task; suggestions are given for “best practice.” The delivery of documents on screens (rather than on paper) makes possible some dynamic enhancements such as inspecting an example’s textual context, toggling on/off various types of information, controlling highlighting and conflation.
Abstract
Good language descriptions liberally illustrate their claims with examples. The author must select and order examples, and provide accompanying information. The example may include a reference number, the example in multiple forms (phonetic, phonemic, morphemic or morphophonemic, written), brackets and categories, glosses, translation, punctuation, functional annotations, grammatical judgements, subscripts, empty categories, ellipses marking, information about the author and language variety, attention-directing mechanisms, and so forth. Formatting these diverse sorts of information is a non-trivial task; suggestions are given for “best practice.” The delivery of documents on screens (rather than on paper) makes possible some dynamic enhancements such as inspecting an example’s textual context, toggling on/off various types of information, controlling highlighting and conflation.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- Introduction 1
- Contextualizing a grammar 11
- Writing grammars for the community 19
- Collective field work 25
- Grammars and the community 45
- From parts of speech to the grammar 71
- Grammar writing for a grammar-reading audience 113
- A grammar as a communicative act, or what does a grammatical description really describe? 127
- A typology of good grammars 143
- Thoughts on growing a grammar 173
- The linguistic example 199
- Index 215
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- Introduction 1
- Contextualizing a grammar 11
- Writing grammars for the community 19
- Collective field work 25
- Grammars and the community 45
- From parts of speech to the grammar 71
- Grammar writing for a grammar-reading audience 113
- A grammar as a communicative act, or what does a grammatical description really describe? 127
- A typology of good grammars 143
- Thoughts on growing a grammar 173
- The linguistic example 199
- Index 215
