Encoding of Variant Taxonomies in TEI

Helena Bermúdez Sabel

doi:10.4000/jtei.2676

Abstract

The inherent flexibility of the digital format has favored the rise of editions that enable access to every witness of a particular textual work. These types of editions might have different goals and seek to answer different research questions, but they usually coincide in drawing attention to the importance of textual variants. To maximize the computational analysis that may be practiced with the variants in different witnesses, a complex taxonomy that reflects the diversity of cases is required. Many scholars have followed the recommended TEI method for encoding types of variants—that is, through the attributes @cause or @type inside the element <rdg>—while others find that method insufficient. These attributes are not able to enclose the hierarchy intrinsic to complicated taxonomies or the overlap of classes in an efficient way. However, the TEI Guidelines do offer a module that addresses this complex encoding issue: feature structures. The method proposed in this paper does not advocate for a controlled vocabulary to categorize types of variants. What it offers instead is a pliable encoding method that allows the editor to include multiple layers of information in each apparatus tagset.

Highlights

The inherent exibility of the digital format has favored the rise of editions that enable access to every witness of a particular textual work
In the case of a linguistic variation taxonomy, it could be convenient to de ne a feature structure that would represent any phonetic phenomenon that implies the addition of a sound
21 the feature structure system is so exible that it allows the combination of heterogeneous types of categorizations using the same methods. This may be especially convenient when working with variant taxonomies and scholarly editions, since di erent theories and models may require di erent categories, and it may be of interest to incorporate them simultaneously

Summary

Feature Structures

13 From the TEI documentation (see the set of attributes speci c to elements representing variant readings: TEI Consortium 2016, Appendix B: Attribute Classes, “att.textCritical”) we can assume that the recommended way to describe the motivation behind a variant and its categorization is done through the attributes @type and @cause. In the case of a linguistic variation taxonomy, it could be convenient to de ne a feature structure that would represent any phonetic phenomenon that implies the addition of a sound. In this manner, we could refer to that structure when de ning paragoge (addition at the end of a word), epenthesis (addition within a word), prothesis (addition at the beginning of a word), etc. 21 the feature structure system is so exible that it allows the combination of heterogeneous types of categorizations using the same methods This may be especially convenient when working with variant taxonomies and scholarly editions, since di erent theories and models may require di erent categories, and it may be of interest to incorporate them simultaneously. 22 In this case, the outer layers of the de nition relate the three examples to one another, the inner elements used to analyze them further are completely di erent

Internal Validation of the Taxonomy

Encoding Textual Variation in TEI

Additional Analyses

Conclusions