How to read an interlinear gloss

An interlinear gloss lines a sentence up against a word-by-word analysis, so you can see what each part means even in a language you do not speak. Once you know what the three lines and the short labels stand for, they are quick to read. Here is how.

The three lines

A standard gloss stacks three lines, top to bottom:

  • The source line is the original text, often split into morphemes with hyphens.
  • The gloss line labels each piece of the source, with plain words for meanings and short tags for grammar.
  • The free translation gives the whole sentence in natural English, usually in quotation marks.

Read it in passes

Start with the bottom line to learn what the sentence means. Then read the top two lines together, word by word, dropping from each source word to the gloss directly under it. The gloss tells you which part of the meaning each word carries. The source and gloss stay aligned, so your eye can move straight down at any point.

What the small-capital labels mean

Grammar is written in short labels rather than full words. NOM marks a subject, PST marks past tense, 1SG marks a first-person singular. Plain words like “house” or “run” are lexical meanings; the labels are grammatical categories. You do not need to memorize them: keep the list open while you read.

The glossing abbreviations cheat sheet explains the common ones with plain notes.

Hyphens and a few marks

A hyphen separates morphemes, and the gloss line uses the same number of hyphens as the source, so every piece has a partner. A period inside a gloss joins meanings that share one form, as in come.out or PST.FEM. A tilde marks a copied syllable, and an overt ø marks a piece that has meaning but no sound. The notation marks section lists them with examples.

A worked example

The Turkish sentence Odadan hızlı çıktım walks through one clause token by token: oda-dan is room-ABL, hız-lı is speed-COM, and çık-tı-m is exit-PFV-1SG. Reading it is good practice, because three short Turkish words answer to five English ones, and the connectors show which goes with which.

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