Early Hick Glossing Conventions

Technical examples in this reference use Leipzig-style interlinear glosses. Lexical meanings are written in lowercase, while grammatical categories are written in uppercase. Multiple categories on a single morpheme are joined with periods, and morpheme boundaries are joined with hyphens:

barak-'er-es
walk-VRB-ABS
"walking; the walking event"

'al-tan-el
person-MED.DIR.ANIM-ERG
"that person, as agent"

The beginner lessons sometimes use plain-English labels such as ACTION, MAIN, or DOER for pedagogical clarity. Those labels are learner aids, not the reference abbreviations.

Common Abbreviations

Abbrev.	Meaning
ABS	absolutive case
ERG	ergative case
POSS	possessive
PL	plural
NEG	negation
PRIV	privative
VRB	verbalizer / verbal predicate marker, especially -’er
ADJ	adjectival/descriptive marker, especially ka-
AGT	agentive
HON	honorific or majestic intensifier, especially ano-
VOL	volitional
DES	desiderative
REQ	requestive
IMP	imperative
PROX	proximal demonstrative
MED	medial demonstrative
DIST	distal demonstrative
DIR	direct, visible, or recoverable deixis
INDIR	indirect, hidden, inferred, or sensed deixis
ANIM	animate
INAN	inanimate
ILL	illative, into or toward an interior
ELL	ellative, out of or from within
SUPE	superessive, on/upon/above
SALL	surface allative, onto/up onto
SUBE	subessive, under/beneath/covered by
SUBL	sublative, down to/under/to a lower surface
TRANS	translative, becoming/changing into
PAST	past tense
FUT	future tense
ITER	iterative
LIST	list particle o
ADD	additive coordinator ru
DISJ	disjunctive coordinator ’a
COM	comitative, accompanying participant
SOC	sociative/shared-action coordinator ewes
Q	question marker