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Article published In:
Historiographia Linguistica
Vol. 48:1 (2021) ► pp.25–59

Glossing in the Linguistic Survey of India

Some insights into early 20th century glossing practices

| C.N.R.S., Université de Paris

In this article, I explore glossing practices in the period surrounding the publication of the Linguistic Survey of India (LSI), the large-scale survey of languages spoken on the Indian subcontinent at the turn of the 20th century, under the stewardship of George Abraham Grierson (1851–1941).

After a brief discussion of the reasons that the LSI constitutes a useful corpus for studying glossing practices, I provide a detailed examination of the glossing practices used in the text specimens which accompany language descriptions in the LSI. I then contrast these practices with glossing in materials produced both prior to and subsequent to the LSI, in order to place the glossing practices established by Grierson within a historical context, thereby contributing a description of one step in the history of glossing of descriptive linguistic materials.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The LSI: Background and advantages as corpus
    • 2.1Background
    • 2.2Advantages as a corpus
    • 2.3Grierson on methodology
  • 3.Aspects of glossing
  • 4.Glossing practices in the LSI text specimens
    • 4.1Kashmiri
    • 4.2Telugu
    • 4.3Lepcha
    • 4.4Kachari
    • 4.5Singpho
    • 4.6Analysis of glossing practices in the specimens of the LSI
  • 5.Glossing practices in other materials
    • 5.1Glossing of South Asian languages before the LSI
      • 5.1.1B. H. Hodgson
      • 5.1.2Specimen translations
    • 5.2Glossing of South Asian languages after the LSI
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 May 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.00081.lah
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