P5: Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange

• 12.1 The Apparatus Entry, Readings, and Witnesses
• 12.2 Linking the Apparatus to the Text
• 12.3 Using Apparatus Elements in Transcriptions
• 12.4 Module for Critical Apparatus

• » 12.2 Linking the Apparatus to the Text
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TEI: The Apparatus Entry¶12.1.1 The Apparatus Entry

Individual textual variations are encoded using the app element, which groups together all the readings constituting the variation. The identification of discrete textual variations or apparatus entries is not a purely mechanical process; different editors may group readings differently. No rules are given here as to how to group readings into apparatus entries; the tags given here may be used to group readings in whatever way the editor finds most perspicuous or useful.

The individual apparatus entry is encoded with the app element:

• app (apparatus entry) contains one entry in a critical apparatus, with an optional lemma and usually one or more readings or notes on the relevant passage.

  type	classifies the variation contained in this element according to some convenient typology.
  from	identifies the beginning of the lemma in the base text.
  to	identifies the endpoint of the lemma in the base text.
  loc	(location) indicates the location of the variation, when the location-referenced method of apparatus markup is used.

The attributes loc, from, and to, are used to link the apparatus entry to the base text, if present. In such cases, several methods may be used for such linkage, each involving a slightly different usage for these attributes. Linkage between text and apparatus is described below in section 12.2 Linking the Apparatus to the Text. For the use of the app element without a base text, see 12.2.3 The Parallel Segmentation Method.

TEI: Readings¶12.1.2 Readings

Individual readings are the crucial elements in any critical apparatus of variants. The following elements should be used to tag individual readings within an apparatus entry:

• lem (lemma) contains the lemma, or base text, of a textual variation.
• rdg (reading) contains a single reading within a textual variation.

N.B. the term lemma is used here in the text-critical sense of ‘the reading accepted as that of the original or of the base text’. This sense differs from that in which the word is used elsewhere in the Guidelines, for example as in the attribute lemma where the intended sense is ‘the root form of an inflected word’, or ‘the heading of an entry in a reference book, especially a dictionary’.

In recording readings within an apparatus entry, the rdg element should always be used; each app usually contains at least one rdg, though it may contain only notes.

The lem element may also be used to record the base text of the source edition, to mark the readings of a base witness, to indicate the preference of an editor or encoder for a particular reading, or (e.g. in the case of an external apparatus) to indicate precisely to which portion of the main text the variation applies. Those who prefer to work without the notion of a base text or who are not using the parallel segmentation method may prefer not to use it at all. How it is used depends in part on the method chosen for linking the apparatus to the text; for more information, see section 12.2 Linking the Apparatus to the Text.

Readings may be encoded individually, or grouped for perspicuity using the rdgGrp element described in section 12.1.3 Indicating Subvariation in Apparatus Entries.

As members of the attribute classes att.witnessed and att.textCritical, both of these elements inherit the following attributes.

• att.witnessed supplies the attribute used to identify the witnesses supporting a particular reading in a critical apparatus.

  wit	(witness or witnesses) contains a space-delimited list of one or more pointers indicating the witnesses which attest to a given reading.

• att.textCritical defines a set of attributes common to all elements representing variant readings in text critical work.

  type	classifies the reading according to some useful typology. Sample values include: 1] substantive; 2] orthographic
  cause	classifies the cause for the variant reading, according to any appropriate typology of possible origins. Sample values include: 1] homeoteleuton; 2] homeoarchy; 3] paleographicConfusion; 4] haplography; 5] dittography; 6] falseEmendation
  varSeq	(variant sequence) provides a number indicating the position of this reading in a sequence, when there is reason to presume a sequence to the variants.
  hand	indicates the hand responsible for a particular reading in the witness.

The att.textCritical class also inherits the following attributes from the att.responsibility class:

• att.responsibility provides attributes indicating who is responsible for something asserted by the markup and the degree of certainty associated with it.

  resp	(responsible party) indicates the agency responsible for the intervention or interpretation, for example an editor or transcriber.
  cert	(certainty) signifies the degree of certainty associated with the intervention or interpretation.

As elsewhere, these attributes may be used to indicate the person responsible for the editorial decision being recorded, and also the degree of certainty associated with that decision by the person carrying out the encoding.

The wit attribute identifies the witnesses which have the reading in question. It is required if the apparatus gathers together readings from different witnesses, but may be omitted in an apparatus recording the readings of only one witness, e.g. substitutions, divergent opinions on what is in the witness or on how to expand abbreviations, etc. Even in such a one-witness apparatus, however, the wit attribute may still be useful when it is desired to record the occurrence of a particular reading in some other witness. For other methods of identifying the witnesses to a reading, see section 12.1.4 Witness Information.

The hand and resp attributes are intelligible only on an element recording a reading from a single witness, and should not be used if more than one witness is given on the same rdg or lem element. If more than one witness is given for the reading, they are undefined. To convey this information when the witness is one among several, the witDetail element should be used; see section 12.1.4 Witness Information.

Where there is a greater weight of editorial discussion and interpretation than can conveniently be expressed through the attributes provided on these elements (for example where there are multiple witnesses for a single reading or multiple editorial responsibility for an emendation) this information can be attached to the apparatus in a note, or recorded in the feature structure notation defined in chapter 18 Feature Structures. In particular, such recurring text-critical situations as palaeographic confusion of particular letters, or homœoarchy or homœoteleuton involving specific character groups, may lend themselves to feature structure treatment. Information concerning these recurrent situations may be encoded into database-like fragments within the text which would then be available to sophisticated computer-assisted analysis. Further work remains to be done on such mechanisms, however, and so no examples are given here of the use of feature structures in text-critical apparatus.

Encoders should be aware of the distinct fields of use of the attribute values wit, hand, and resp. Broadly, wit identifies the physical entity in which the reading is found (manuscript, clay tablet, papyrus, printed edition); hand refers to the agent responsible for inscribing that reading in that physical entity (scribe, author, inscriber, hand 1, hand 2); resp indicates the scholar responsible for asserting the existence of that reading in that physical entity. In some cases, the categories may blur: a scholar may produce an edition introducing readings for which he or she is responsible; that edition may itself become a witness in a later critical apparatus. Thus, readings introduced as corrections in the earlier edition will be seen in the later apparatus as witnessed by the earlier edition. As observed in the discussion concerning the discrimination of hand and resp in transcription of primary sources in section 11.3.2.2 Hand, Responsibility, and Certainty Attributes, the division of layers of responsibility through various scholars for particular aspects of a particular reading may require the more complex mechanisms for assigning responsibility described in chapter 21 Certainty, Precision, and Responsibility.

TEI: Indicating Subvariation in Apparatus Entries¶12.1.3 Indicating Subvariation in Apparatus Entries

The rdgGrp element may be used to group readings, either because they have identical values on one or more attributes, or because they are seen as forming a self-contained variant sequence, or for some other reason. This grouping of readings is entirely optional: no such grouping of readings is required.

• rdgGrp (reading group) within a textual variation, groups two or more readings perceived to have a genetic relationship or other affinity.

The rdgGrp element is a member of class att.textCritical and therefore can carry the wit, type, cause, varSeq, hand, and resp attributes described in the preceding section. When values for any of these attributes are given on a rdgGrp element, the values given are inherited by the rdg or lem elements nested within the reading group, unless overridden by a new specification on the individual reading element.

Similarly, rdgGrp may be used to organize the substantive variants of an apparatus entry. Editors may need to indicate that each of a group of witnesses may be taken as all supporting a particular reading, even though there may be variation concerning the exact form of that reading in, or the degree of support offered by, those witnesses. For example: one may identify three substantive variants on the first word of Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Prologue in the manuscripts: these might be expressed in regularized spelling as Experience, Experiment, and Eriment. In fact, the manuscripts display many different spellings of these words, and a scholar may wish both to show that the manuscripts have all these variant spellings and that these variant spellings actually support only the three regularized spelling forms. One may term these variant spellings as ‘subvariants’ of the regularized spelling forms.

This subvariation can be expressed within an app element by gathering the readings into three groups according to the normalized form of their reading. All the readings within each group may be accounted subvariants of the main reading for the group, which may be indicated by tagging it as a lem element or as <rdg type='groupBase'>.