Interlinear gloss
= Interlinear gloss
An <interlinear gloss> aligns a linguistic example with an analysis of the meanings or grammatical properties of its words and <morphemes>. It commonly combines an original-language line, a segmented line, analytical labels and a freer translation. The aligned analysis provides information that the translation alone can conceal.
The <Leipzig Glossing Rules by Bernard Comrie and others> specify word alignment, matching hyphens at segmentable morpheme boundaries, and abbreviated grammatical labels.<Leipzig Glossing Rules by Bernard Comrie and others>[Rules 1–3, alignment, morpheme correspondence and category labels]{ref} In the original English illustration `walk-ed` / `walk-PST`, `PST` identifies past <grammatical tense>; the matching hyphens connect the ending with its proposed contribution. The unsegmented surface form is `walked`.
A matching number of boundaries does not prove the segmentation correct. The rules explicitly distinguish the gloss from the original data: different analyses can describe the same recorded form. An <interlinear gloss> therefore makes claims about <linguistic morphology> inspectable while preserving the need for independent evidence about those claims.