Text Encoding

Transcriptions have been encoded in XML according to the TEI P5 Guidelines for electronic text editing. For validation purposes, I have used Roma to customize a schema (RelaxNG compact syntax) which includes the standard P5 modules (core, header, textstructure) as well as the msdescription (Manuscript Description), transcr (Transcription of Primary Sources), and tagdocs (Documentation of TEI modules) modules.

To facilitate the description of linguistic features, my schema defines the following new elements:

  • <borrowing />
    This element describes a non-native word which has been adopted into the language.
    Example: <borrowing sourcelang="MLG via DA" borrowdate="mid-15th c.">strax</borrowing>

    Distinct from the foreign element, a borrowing may have the following attributes:
    • sourcelang (source language)
    • borrowdate (date of borrowing)
    • borrowtype (type of borrowing; e.g. calque, loanword)
  • <modernism />
    This element describes a word, phrase, usage, or peculiarity of style which represents an innovative or distinctively modern feature.
    Example: <modernism date="17th c.">ekkert</modernism> er það at siá eður
  • <neologism />
    This element describes a word or phrase which is new to the language or one which has been recently coined.
    Example: <neologism>þánkafullur</neologism>
  • <archaism />
    This element describes an archaic morphological, phonological, or syntactic feature or an archaic word, phrase, expression, etc.
    Example: <archaism>em</archaism> ek albúen til brott ferðar

The initial stage of the encoding process is complete. During the next stage, I will be including additional tags to facilitate linguistic analysis.