Intellectual problems in scholarly encoding

Intellectual problems in scholarly encoding

Harold
Short
Centre for Computing in the Humanities King's
College London
harold.short@kcl.ac.uk

Mavis
H.
Cournane

The European Foundation
cournane@imbolc.ucc.ie

Donnchadh
Ó Corráin

The European Foundation

Claus
Huitfeldt
Wittgenstein Archives University of
Bergen
Claus.Huitfeldt@hit.uib.no

Willard
McCarty
Centre for Computing in the Humanities King's
College London
willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk

1999

University of Virginia

Charlottesville, VA

ACH/ALLC 1999

editor

encoder

Sara
A.
Schmidt

Harold Short, Chair
This session offers three views on intellectual problems and consequences in
the scholarly encoding of texts. Two papers (Cournane and McCarty) approach
the issues by direct engagement with literary texts, the third (Huitfeldt)
by a philosophical analysis of the terms "representation" and
"interpretation".
Issues of implementation in hardware and software and of any specific
metalanguage are deliberately excluded. Important though these matters are
to humanities scholars who work with texts, and significant though the TEI
has been and continues to be for the field, there is always the danger that
preoccupation with means may obscure intellectual analysis or that
familiarity with a specific system or set of tools may lead one to approach
a new problem from the perspective of the already-intended solution.
This session therefore focuses specifically on the intersection and
interaction of the philosophical and critical perspectives with the
computation, trying to avoid implementation questions. Although it deals
specifically with markup, its subject is essentially that of humanities
computing as a whole: the electronic medium as an instrument of perception
and analysis.

Reasoning the rhyme: The encoding of complex early Irish Poetry
Mavis H. Cournane
Donnchadh Ó Corráin

Introduction
Poetry was the most significant literary genre in early medieval
Ireland. Medieval Irish verse is composed in accordance with
strict metrical rules laid down by influential schools of
poetry. These rules are prescribed in medieval handbooks of
metrics that were used in the schools to train poets in the
intricate rules of Irish metrics. Detailed rules in normative
text were prescribed for metre, alliteration, and rhyme. The
encoding of the metrical features of Irish verse will serve a
variety of the following ends:
it occasions detailed and rigorous metrical analysis
of a kind not usually done to this level of
consciousness;
it enables the generation of textual statistics in
regard to metrical features and it enables the testing
of the prescriptions of the handbooks against the poetic
corpus;
since the application of metrical features changes
over time and between poets, it is an aid to
establishing dating, authorship and milieu of
texts;
pedagogically, it enables the construction of
multi-faceted teaching tools for training students in
the intricacies of metre (they usually find it
difficult). For example, with appropriate software,
different views of metre can be presented clearly and
unambiguously.

The encoding mechanism chosen has to satisfy a number of
intellectual requirements:
it has to aid a comprehensive analysis of the poems to
check if they obey the rules set out in the handbooks of
metrics;
as these metrical rules change over time the encoding
mechanism has to have the flexibility to reflect
this;
it has to facilitate the testing of the normative
prescription against the actual performance of metrical
rules either within an individual poem or across an
entire corpus.

Methodology
The metrical features covered in this discussion are:
rhyme (final and internal);
alliteration;
formal closure.

To satisfy encoding requirements a the single element
(<seg>) with carefully arranged attributes is used to
encode all the necessary features. However, this is laborious
and time consuming and a question about this method is--is the
end result commensurate with the effort? This is difficult to
answer but non-computer analysis is at least as time consuming,
probably less productive in results and, further, the data so
generated are not readily exchangeable.

Conclusion
An encoding scheme such as that offered by the TEI currently
allows for the encoding of the complexities of Irish poetry in a
very generic way using the <seg> element and the refining
attributes of type and subtype. However, markup for markup's
sake is not an end in itself---the encoding must serve some
useful purpose. As demonstrated above, encoding in TEI is useful
for making the workings of early Irish metrics more transparent
for the student and serves as a useful pedagogical tool for the
teacher of this subject. Ongoing research on this paper will
attempt to identify the depth of markup needed to do a more
complete statistical analysis of metrics in early Irish verse
and will suggests ways in which the TEI may be extended to meet
the demands of such analysis.

Bibliography

Osborn
J.Bergin
Metrica

Ériu

8

161-69
1916
9
77-84
1921-1923

Liam
Breatnach
Zur frage der "roscada" im irischen

H.
L.
C.
Tristam

Metrik und Medienwechsel/ Metrics and
Media

Tübingen

1991
197-205

James
Carney
Linking alliteration (`fidrad
freccomail')

Éigse

18

251-62
1980-1981

[metrics]

David
Chisholm
David
Robey
Encoding Verse Texts

Computers and the Humanities

29
2
99-111
1995

Rijklof
Hofman
Moines irlandais et métrique latine

Études Celtiques

27

235-66
1990

Kaarina
Hollo
The alliterative structure of Mael Ísu Ó
Brolcháin's A aingil, beir

Ériu

41

77-80
1990

Paul
Klopsch

Einführung in die mittellateinische
Verslehre

Darmstadt

1972

Jürgen
Leonhardt

Dimensio syllabarum: Studien zur
lateinischen Prosodie und Verslehre vone der Spätantike
bus zur frühen Renaissance
Hypomnemata: Untersuchungen zur Antike und
zu ihrem Nachleben

92
Göttingen

1989

Michael
Sperberg-McQueen

Lou
Burnard

Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and
Interchange (P3)

Chicago, Oxford

1994

Kuno
Meyer

A primer of Irish metrics

Dublin

1909

Gerard
Murphy

Early Irish metrics

Dublin

1961
repr. 1963

Text Encoding, Representation and Interpretation
Claus Huitfeldt

This paper argues that representation and interpretation should be
regarded as relationships between concrete texts and their
audiences, not as separate entities in some realm of mental or
abstract objects. This perspective proves especially fruitful to
discussions of the role of interpretation in text encoding.
Current views on how text encoding relates to matters of
representation and interpretation seem confused. On the one hand,
many encoding projects in the humanities find their raison d'etre in a claim to represent some
body of texts in an accurate and reliable form. So-called
"descriptive" text encoding is an essential tool in such efforts. On
the other hand, difficulties in these attempts to create objectively
accurate representations are often blamed on a seemingly inescapable
"interpretive" element in transcription and encoding.
But if text encoding is itself at bottom interpretive, how can it be
used to represent texts at all? On the
other hand, if everything about this supposedly representational
device is at bottom interpretive, doesn't the distinction between
representation and interpretation become rather empty?
I propose two steps to get out of this problem. As a first step, we
may imagine representation and interpretation as different parts of
one continuum. Our task is to find a suitable location for a
demarcation line between the two areas somewhere along this
continuum. Then, by stating that something is a representation, we
are not excluding the possibility that it might in some other
perspective be seen as an interpretation, i.e. that the demarcation
line might legitimately have been drawn elsewhere. Nor are we
denying that representations and interpretations are, in some deeper
perspective, of the same kind. But we deny the usefulness of a
demarcation line placed at one extreme of the continuum.
The second step is this: "Representation" and "interpretation" are
best seen as names for relations between texts. Derivatively, the
terms may then also refer to individual texts which have these
relationships to other texts. The move can be brought one step
further by extending the relationships to include the texts' audiences: Texts are not representations or
interpretations of each other in
abstracto, but only in relation to certain audiences of
human, i.e. social, historical and cultural beings.
On the basis of these two steps, we can clarify the role of text
encoding in representation and interpretation. The word "interpret",
as used in relation to text, has at least two broad senses:
1. To identify the meaning of a text (reading, listening,
deciphering)
2. To explain the meaning of a text (paraphrasing,
analysing, discussing)

Whereas the first of these senses talks about identification of meaning, the second talks about explanation of meaning. On the relational
view suggested above, the meaning of a text can only be given by
another text: identification as well as explanation must themselves
take the form of text.
My proposal is that we reserve the word "representation" for the
identification of meaning. Just as
identification normally precedes explanation, representation
normally precedes interpretation. To represent a text, then, is to
identify and reproduce its meaning in the form of another text. This
meaning is the linguistic content, roughly in the sense of what
representatives of the Text Encoding
Initiative seem to refer to when they speak about "the
text itself", or what Nelson Goodman has
called "sequences of letters, spaces and punctuation marks" [Goodman
1976, p 115]. For some purposes we may legitimately want to extend
this definition to include compositional or typographic features
like paragraphs, chapters, font shifts etc., but as an absolute
minimum it must include linguistic content in the sense just
indicated. This is as close as we can come to a "rock bottom" of
objective facts in textual scholarship.
Neither the faculties and skills nor the arguments and methods we
employ in identifying text in this sense are essentially different
from those we employ in interpretive activities. This observation is
simply a restatement of the principle of the "hermeneutic circle",
which also accounts for the fact that just as interpretations are
made on the basis of representations, representations themselves may
be revised in the light of interpretations.
According to what we have said so far, to interpret a text is either
1. to put forth another text
which is rephrasing or commenting upon the first, or
2. to add something to the
original text which contributes to a more or less specific
understanding of it.

We may call the first kind of interpretation "stand-alone", and the
second "in-line".
For in-line interpretation, which is the main focus of the rest of
this paper, text encoding provides exciting possibilities. Some
examples are:
comments,
links,
alternate structures, and
thematic tagging.

A detailed discussion, including a discussion of how such devices
have been judged by one specific encoding project (the Wittgenstein
Archives), will provide examples of the kinds of considerations
which may be relevant for the application of interpretive encoding
in philosophy as well as other disciplines.
The discussion suggests that the proposed understanding of encoding
practices agrees with the following, common-sense view of
representation and interpretation:
1. A text is a representation of
another text if the first has the same linguistic content,
i.e. the same wording, as the other.
2. A text is an interpretation of
another text if the first is not a
representation of the other, but explains, discusses, or
gives an alternative account of the meaning of the other
with other words.
3. A text may contain both a
representation and an interpretation of another text,
provided that the representation and interpretation are
clearly distinguished from each other.

References

Nelson
Goodman

The Languages of Art: An approach to a
Theory of Symbols
2nd ed

Indianapolis
Bobbs-Merrill
1969
1976

Arne
Næss

Communication and Argument - Elements of
Applied Semantics

Oslo
Universitetsforlaget
1966
1981

C.
Michael
Sperberg-McQueen

Lou
Burnard

Guidelines for the Encoding and Interchange
of Machine-Readable Texts (TEI P3)

Chicago & Oxford

1994

Ludwig
Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein's Nachlass. The Bergen
Electronic Edition
CD-ROM Edition in four volumes

Oxford University Press
1998-99

Thinking with markup: the case of personification
Willard McCarty

In this paper I use the specific case of personification in Ovid's
Metamorphoses to test the notion that
encoding is an intellectual act which affects how we understand a
text.
I begin by considering the role of the machine in the act of
encoding, arguing that the sorting capacity of the computer, by
bringing all tags of an identical type together, tends to result in
a degree of systemacity not known or perhaps possible before. It
becomes practical to work at a very fine level of detail over a
large text because individual interpretations can so easily be
brought together. Because only identical items are sorted together,
reduction of variety to a limited set of categories is strongly
rewarded, and so consistency is enforced. The inability of the
machine to handle anything not completely explicit means that
encoding is a starkly declarative process. Thus all ambiguities to
be encoded must be completely resolved. The interesting matter is
not simply that the encoder is forced to make difficult, highly
interpretative decisions which the conventional literary critic can
and perhaps should avoid; he or she is apt to see problems that were
not apparent as problems before.
Personification (lit. "person-making") is a case in point. In the
paper I show how the twin computational imperatives of completely
explicit and rigorously consistent representation, by framing the
mental operations of rendering personification into a computational
metalanguage, change how and what we think about it.
I approach the trope as a phenomenon for encoding against the
background of its long rhetorical and literary-critical tradition
(Paxson 1994; McCarty 1993; McCarty 1994). Curiously, this tradition
seems almost entirely irrelevant to a computational approach -
precisely because computation changes what we see and how we are
able to think about it. Instead of looking at the roles
personificated characters play in the stories where they occur, as
scholars have done for the past two and a half millennia, the
encoder focuses on how even the most minor personifications come
into being linguistically.
After a brief introduction to the Metamorphoses and the ontological context it provides
for personification, I describe my descriptive grammar of the trope.
Then I examine in detail specific instances under three categories,
considering each candidate against the criteria defined in my
grammar. These criteria consist of local features in the language
modified in their effect by 5 different types of context.
The first two categories cover uniquely personified instances and
those with an uneven history of personification, respectively; the
third, entities that are evidently personified by the influence of
an anthropomorph, such as Medea or Orpheus. I show that in addition
to the local factors (which I take as primary) each category
manifests a different range of dependencies on various of the
contexts described in the grammar.
A fourth category is reserved for a significant exception to the rule
that personifications are created through some alteration of a
sub-human entity. It identifies entities ontologically unusual by
nature rather than through change. I include them because they are
products of the human imagination, therefore closer to humanity than
actual beasts and so implicitly personified. They also exemplify the
commanding role of interpretative decision in the absence of direct
evidence.
In addition to the successful personifications, I also focus on
liminal cases so as to emphasise the computationally unjustifiable,
hence arbitrary, interpretative nature of the encoding decision. I
show how by excluding them two things are accomplished: we gain a
delimited and therefore useful set of phenomena, and precisely by
excluding the problematic cases we throw strong light on the
workings of ambiguity in the poem. Thus markup simultaneously
mistranslates and illuminates.
I argue in the paper for the idea that a coherently rendered metatext
is a modifiable interpretative representation of its text, i.e. a
model, and that as is common to the practice of modelling, its
mutability is essential to its purpose. I show how, in the specific
case of personification, the problematic cases invite disagreement,
and how a computational form of publication serves the base nature
of interpretative markup by allowing the user to alter encoding
decisions and automatically regenerate the compiled work.
In conclusion I address the overall question of how scholarly
encoding and scholarship in a given field interrelate. From my
example, it seems clear that computational encoding allows the
scholar systematically to model the behaviour of a complex poetic
trope for a specific text, producing a useful list of instances, a
descriptive grammar and liminal cases that raise illuminating
questions. It seems likely that this grammar can be applied usefully
to other texts and that it can provide a starting point both for a
broader understanding of the trope and for further computational
work on the elusive idea of context. Less obvious is the profound
dependence of an encoding on a prior, readerly conception of the
text. Thus, for Ovidian personification, the redefinition of what is
meant by 'person,' down to the level at which markup provides real
help, proceeds from a reading in which apparently minor ontological
flux is given major importance -- a critical choice not a textual
inevitability. Thus phenomena appear as candidates for markup
because of the interpretative reading that frames them.
Hence encoding is essentially a means of scholarly thought and
expression. This means that encoding is not in essence or only a
backroom technical operation, rather a language of expression that
scholars may need to read directly as a matter of course. If our
goal is the stability of a standard encoding metalanguage against
the flux of hardware and software, then direct encounter with it
would seem to be unavoidable. Furthermore, experience with natural
language suggests strongly that simplicity and perspicuity of style
are closely allied with if not preconditions for profundity of
content. Is readable, perspicuous metalanguage an achievable goal?
The intellectual view of encoding would suggest that it must be.

References

W.
McCarty
Encoding Persons and Places in the Metamorphoses of Ovid: 1.
Engineering the Text

Texte et Informatique
Texte: Revue de Critique et de Théorie
Littéraire

13/14

121-72
1993

W.
McCarty
Encoding Persons and Places in the Metamorphoses of Ovid. Part 2: The
Metatextual Translation

Texte, Métatexte, Métalangage
Texte: Revue de Critique et de Théorie
Littéraire

15/16

261-305
1994

W.
McCarty

A provisional grammar of personification
for the Met

1998

<>.

James
J.
Paxson

The poetics of personification
Literature, Culture, Theory
RichardMacksey
MichaelSpinker

6
Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
1994