Note: I tried to send this to the TEI-L list at a time when the Univ. of
Bergen was more or less cutt off from both the TEI lists. I did not find
any immediate comments in the listarchives the first weeks after I sent
it, so I am now resending it in the hope that I might see some response
now that the Univ. of Bergen is reconnected to the list. Please delete
this if you have read it before and have no comments.
 
Espen Ore
 
--------------------------
 
Working on Norse texts one encounters a large number of abbreviations -
in the more extreme cases more than 50 percent of the words are
abbreviated and there can be more than one abbreviation within a word
(or string). In the latter case the abbreviations may be disjunct, and
even with a single abreviation its expansion may be disjunct.
 
A simple abbreviation may be "h" with a crossbar which can be expanded
to "hann". A disjunct expansion can be found in "ml*e" where "l*" is l
with a crossbar. This can be expanded to "mæte". What could be
called an example of a disjunct abbreviation is "k*k*ia" (k*=k with a
crossbar) = "kirkia".
 
One single transcriber could probably define a set of rules for using
(or bending) TEI to be able to describe these abbreviations and their
expansions in a way that is useful, but with a group of transcribers
involved there will be, just to mention one example, different views of
whether the abbreviation or the expansion holds the most important
information.
 
At a seminar here in Bergen today we found that one needed to be able to
encode as searchable text and not as attributes:
 
a) the abbreviated string with localization of the abbreviation mark(s)
if any
 
b) the expanded string with localization of the inserted (or
expanded?) letters
 
c) b) should if necessary be repeated for different expansions of the same
string.
 
In TEI c) seems to be taken care of by using <app> and <rdg>.
 
a) and b) are not fully handled by either <abbr> and <expan>. The use of
entities as described on pp 164-165 in P3 is not really satisfactory,
since among other things one has to make a choice whether the entity
should stand for an <abbr> or an <expan> element. We want both at the
same time!
 
The transcription of primary sources is an area where I think TEI will
have to be expanded as part of the updating work now beginning. During
our discussions today we came as far as to suggest a new model that
allows what we want. In the example expanded as "kirkia" one could do
something like:
 
<abbr>
<abbrstring><hcrossbar>kk</hcrossbar>ia</abbrstring>
<expstring>k<insertedtext>ir</insertedtext>kia</expstring>
</abbr>
 
I would very much appreciate some comments on this, especially if we
have overlooked something fundamental.
 
espen
 
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Espen Ore      Persons.: 96 81 21 81           Tel: + 47 55 58 28 65
Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities  Fax: + 47 55 58 94 70
Bergen, NORWAY                                   [log in to unmask]