Description
Book SynopsisThis volume is the first book to focus specifically on the topic of comparative glossing. It brings together new research on glossing practices from traditions in both the West and East Asia, with a focus on Japan. It also touches on the relation between glossing in the medieval manuscript tradition and the modern linguistic use of the gloss. Its purpose is to present a sample of the most recent studies on glossing as it is practiced across very different parts of the world, highlighting the many shared features found across space and time.
Glosses take many forms and serve numerous functions according to when and where they are produced. They constitute a cross-cultural phenomenon anchored in language, and are the manifestation of hermeneutic processes involved in the transfer of knowledge from one linguistic area to another. Glosses are an integral part of all the stages of this transfer, which is characterized by the necessity to decode and explain the message, encompassing basic grammatical commentary and wider exegetical discussions.
Table of ContentsI. Comparative Glossing Practice
1. Continuity and Discontinuity: Glossing as a Dynamic System
2. The Five Services of Sanskrit Commentaries and Diomedes’ Grammar Program
II. Glosses as Tools for Access to Knowledge
3. Glossing Glosses: Methods for Transcribing and Glossing Japanese kundoku Texts
4. Issues in Dictionaries Recording Kunten Glosses
5. Interconnecting Knowledge in Early Medieval Glosses
6. Auraicept na nÉces and the Art of Medicine
III. Glosses and Linguistics
7. Dry-point Grammatical Glosses
8. The Pragmatics of Paratextual Paraphernalia
9. A Revised Typology for the St Gall Priscian Glosses
10. Glossing Practices in 1850–1911: Descriptions of Languages with Complex Verbal Morphology
