Compound and derived stems

The morpho-semantic structure of a derived stem may be completely regular and transparent, as in Germ. wolk-ig (cloud-Adjr) ‘cloudy’, or it may be opaque, as in Germ. heil-ig (salvation-Adjr) ‘holy’. If the discussion focuses on word-formation, then both of these words will be glossed as indicated. If the internal structure of stems is of no relevance, then it will not be shown in T, and consequently the glosses can reduce to ‘cloudy’ and ‘holy’, respectively. Similarly, instead of Germ. be-komm-en (Appl-come-Inf), one can put bekomm-en (get-Inf).

For lexicalized complex stems, morphological segmentation plus corresponding gloss often amounts more to etymology than to morphological analysis (as in the last example). It also unnecessarily obscures the correspondence of the gloss to the idiomatic translation. This should be borne in mind before one carries it through as a general principle in text editions.

In an ideal methodological situation, a gloss is taken from a lexicon where it constitutes one of the fields in the microstructure of each lexical entry. The German lexicon may contain, e.g., the three entries Huf 'hoof', Eisen 'iron' and Hufeisen 'horse-shoe'. If the latter occurs in T, then it may either be analyzed or not. In the former case Huf and Eisen will be looked up in the lexicon and will be matched by their glosses, while in the latter case Hufeisen will be looked up and be glossed as ‘horse.shoe’.

Copula

A formative which enables an element of a non-verbal category to serve as the predicate of the clause (thus, which verbalizes it) may receive the gloss 'copula' (COP) no matter whether it is free or bound (to the predicate stem). Alternatively, such a formative may be a verbalizer (VR).

Causative and applicative

On the basis of the principle that the label (of a value) of a morphological category designates its generic function, a derivational formative on a verb which covers both causative and applicative function may be labeled Transitivizer (TR), on condition that there is no formative beside it specialized in one of the functions 'causative' or 'applicative'. Moreover, if the formative in question raises the valency of transitive bases, too, the denomination 'transitivizer' is less than appropriate. It may then be called 'valency raiser' (VAL).