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:

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 . For the use of the app element without a base text, see .

Each app element comprises one or more readings, which in turn are encoded using the rdg or other elements, as described in the next section. A very simple partial apparatus for the first line of the might take a form something like this: Experience though noon Auctoritee Experiment thogh noon Auctoritee Eryment though none auctorite Of course, in practice the apparatus will be somewhat more complex. Specifically, it may be desired to record more obviously that manuscripts El and La agree on the words noon Auctoritee, to indicate a preference for one reading, etc. The following sections on readings, subvariation, and witness information describe some of the more important complications which can arise.

&app;

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: 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 may always be used; each app must contain at least one rdg.

The lem element may also be used, under some circumstances, 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 to make clear, in cases of ambiguity, precisely which portion of the main text the variation applies to. Those who prefer to work without the notion of a base text 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 .

Readings may be encoded individually, or grouped for perspicuity using the rdgGrp element described in section .

As members of the attribute class att.textCritical, both of these elements inherit the following attributes. Some of these attributes are intelligible only if the reading is ascribed to a single witness; others have no such restriction.

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 .

The type attribute allows the encoder to classify readings in any convenient way, for example as substantive variants of the lemma: Experience Experiment Eryment or as orthographic variants: though thogh thouh

The varSeq and cause attributes may be used to convey information on the sequence and cause of variation. In the following apparatus fragment, the reading Eryment is tagged as sequential to (derived from) the reading Experiment, and the cause is given as loss of the abbreviation for per. Experiment Eryment

If a manuscript is written in several hands, and it is desired to report which hand wrote a particular reading, the hand attribute should be used. For example, in the Munich manuscript containing the , the word alle has been changed to allen: Swaz hi gât umbe daz sint alle megede, die wellent ân man alle allen disen sumer gân.

Similarly, if a witness is hard to decipher, it may be desired to indicate responsibility for the claim that a particular reading is supported by a particular witness. In line 2212a of , for example, the manuscript is read in different ways by different scholars; the editor Klaeber prints one text, using parentheses to indicate his expansion, and records in the apparatus two different accounts of the manuscript reading, by Zupitza and Chambers:For the sake of legibility in the example, long marks over vowels are omitted. se ðe on hea(um) h(æþ)e heaðo hlæwe heaum hope hord beweotode,

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 .

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 . 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.

The note element may also be used to record the specific wording of notes in the apparatus of the source edition, as here in a transcription of Friedrich Klaeber's note on 2207a: syððan Beowulfe Fol. 179a beowulfe. Folio 179, with the last page (Fol. 198b), is the worst part of the entire MS. It has been freshened up by a later hand, but not always correctly. Information on doubtful readings is in the notes of Zupitza and Chambers. brade rice Notes providing details of the reading of one particular witness should be encoded using the specialized witDetail element described in section .

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 , 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 .

&lem; &rdg;

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.

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.

To indicate that both Hg and La vary only orthographically from the lemma, one might tag both readings rdg type='orthographic', as shown in the preceding section. This fact can be expressed more perspicuously, however, by grouping their readings into a rdgGrp, thus: though thogh thouhe

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 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'.

In this example, the different subvariants on Experience, Experiment, and Eriment are held within three rdgGrp elements nested within the enclosing app element: Experience Experiens Experiment Eximent Eriment[unattested] Eryment From this, one may deduce that the regularized reading Experience is supported by all three manuscripts El Hg Ha4, although the spelling differs in Ha4, and that the regularized reading Eriment is supported by Ra2, even though the form differs in that manuscript. Accordingly, an application which recognizes that these apparatus entries show subvariation may then assign all the witnesses instanced as attesting the sub-variants on that lemma as actually supporting the reading of the lemma itself at a higher level of classification. Thus, Ha4 here supports the reading Experience found in El and Hg, even though it is spelt slightly differently in Ha4.

Reading groups may nest recursively, so that variants can be classified to any desired depth. Because apparatus entries may also nest, the app element might also be used to group readings in the same way. The example above is substantially identical to the following, which uses app instead of rdgGrp: Experience Experiens Experiment Eximent Eriment[unattested] Eryment This expresses even more clearly than the previous encoding of this material that at the highest level of classification (apparatus entry A1), this variation has three normalized readings, and that the first of these is supported by manuscripts El, Hg, and Ha4; the second by Cp, Ld1, and La; and the third by Ra2. Some encoders may find the use of nested apparatus entries less intuitive than the use of reading groups, however, so both methods of classifying the readings of a variation are allowed.

Reading groups may also be used to bring together variants which form an apparent developmental sequence, and to make clear that other readings are not part of that sequence, as in the following example, which makes clear that the variant sequence experiment to eriment says nothing about the relative priority of experiment and experience: Experience Experiens Experiment Eximent Eriment[unattested] Eryment

&rdgGrp;

Witness Information

A given reading is associated with the set of witnesses attesting it by listing the witnesses in the wit attribute on the rdg, lem, or rdgGrp element. Special mechanisms, described in the following sections, are needed to associate annotation on a reading with one specific witness among several (section ), to transcribe witness information verbatim from a source edition (section ), and to identify the formal lists of witnesses typically provided in the front matter of critical editions (section ).

Fragmentary Witnesses

If a witness is incomplete (whether a single fragment, a series of fragments, or a relatively complete text with one or more lacunae), it is usually desirable to record explicitly where its preserved portions begin and end. The following empty tags, which may occur within any lem or rdg element, indicate the beginning or end of a fragmentary witness or of a lacuna within a witness: These elements constitute the class model.rdgPart, members of which are permitted within the elements lem and rdg when the module defined by this chapter is included in a schema.

Suppose a fragment of a manuscript X of the has a physical lacuna, and the text of the manuscript begins with auctorite. In an apparatus this might appear thus, distinguished from the reading of other manuscripts by the presence of the lacunaEnd element: Auctoritee auctorite auctorite In some cases, the apparatus in the source may commence recording the readings for a particular witness without its being clear whether the previous absence of readings for this witness is due to a lacuna, or to some other reason. The witStart element may be used in this circumstance: Auctoritee auctorite auctorite

&witStart; &witEnd; &lacunaStart; &lacunaEnd;

The Location-referenced Method

The location-referenced method of encoding apparatus provides a convenient method for encoding printed apparatus; in this method as in most printed editions, the apparatus is linked to the base text by indicating explicitly only the block of text on which there is a variant (noted usually by a canonical reference scheme, or by line number in the edition, such as A 137 or Page 15 line 1).

If the location-referenced method is used for an apparatus stored externally to the base text, the TEI header must have the declaration:

In the body of the document, the base text (here El) will appear:

Elsewhere in the document, or in a separate file, the apparatus will appear. On each app element, the loc attribute should be specified to indicate where the variant occurs in the base text. Experiment Eryment

If the same text is encoded using in-line storage, the apparatus is dispersed through the base text block to which it refers. In this case, the location of the variant can be read from the line in which it occurs. Experience Experiment Eryment though noon Auctoritee Were in this world ...

Since the location is not required to be exact, the apparatus for a line might also appear at the end of the line: Experience though noon Auctoritee Experiment Eryment Were in this world ...

When the apparatus is linked to the text by means of location references, as shown here, it is not possible to find automatically the precise portion of text varied by the readings. In order to show explicitly what portion of the base text is replaced by the variant readings, the lem element may be used: Experience though noon Auctoritee Experience Experiment Eryment Were in this world ... Often the lemma will have no attributes, being simply the base text reading and requiring no qualification, but it may optionally carry the normal attributes, as shown here. Some text critics prefer to abbreviate or elide the lemma, in order to save space or trouble; such practice is not forbidden by these Guidelines, but no recommendations are made for conventions of abbreviating the lemma, whether abbreviation of each word, or suppression of all but the first and last word, etc.

Where it is intended that the apparatus be complete enough to allow the reconstruction of the witnesses (or at least of their non-orthographic variations), simple location-reference methods are unlikely to be as successful as the other two methods, which allow the unambiguous reconstruction of the lemma from the encoding. The use of (for example) an XPath expression denoting a text range rather than a simple pointer may however obviate this necessity

The Double End-Point Attachment Method

In the double end-point attachment method, the beginning and end of the lemma in the base text are both explicitly indicated. It thus differs from the location-referenced method, in which only the larger span of text containing the lemma is indicated. Double end-point attachment permits unambiguous matching of each variant reading against its lemma. It or the parallel-segmentation method should be used in all cases where this is desired, for example where the apparatus is intended to enable full reconstruction of the text, or of the substantives, of every witness.

When the double end-point attachment method is used, the from and to attributes of the app element are used to indicate the beginning and ending points of the reading in the base text: their values are identifiers which occur at the locations in question. If no other markup is present there, the beginning and ending points should be marked using the anchor element defined in chapter . In cases where it is not possible to insert anchors within the base text (e.g. where the text is on a read-only medium) the beginning and end of the lemma may be indicated by using the indirect pointing mechanisms discussed in chapter . Explicit anchors are more likely to be reliable, and are therefore to be preferred.

The double end-point attachment method may be used with in-line or external apparatus. In the latter case, the base text (here El) will appear with anchor elements inserted at every place where a variant begins or ends (unless some element with an identifier already begins or ends at that point):

The apparatus will be separately encoded: Experiment Eryment No anchor element is needed at the beginning of the line, since the from attribute can use the identifier for the line as a whole; the lemma is assumed to run from the beginning of the element indicated by the from attribute, to the end of that indicated by the to attribute. If no value is given for to, the lemma runs from the beginning to the end of the element indicated by the from attribute.

When the apparatus is encoded in-line, it is dispersed through the base text. Only the beginning of the lemma need be marked with an anchor, since the app is inserted at the end of the lemma, and itself therefore marks the end of the lemma. Experience Experiment Eryment though noon Auctoritee Were in this world ...

The lemma need not be repeated within the app element in this method, as it may be extracted reliably from the base text. If an exhaustive list of witnesses is available, it will also not be necessary to specify just which manuscripts agree with the base text to enable reconstruction of witnesses. An application will be able to determine the manuscripts that witness the base reading, by noting which witnesses are attested as having a variant reading, and inferring the base text reading for all others after adjusting for fragmentary witnesses and for witnesses carrying overlapping variant readings.

Alternatively, if it is desired to make an explicit record of the attestation of the base text, the lem element may be embedded within app, carrying the witnesses to the base. Thus Experience Experiment Eryment

This method is designed to cope with overlapping lemmata. For example, at line 117 of the Wife of Bath's Prologue, the manuscripts Hg (Hengwrt), El (Ellesmere), and Ha4 (British Library Harleian 7334) read: HgAnd of so parfit wys a wight ywroght ElAnd for what profit was a wight ywroght Ha4And in what wise was a wight ywroght

In this case, one might wish to record in what wise was in Ha4 as a single variant for of so parfit wys in Hg, and was a wight in El and Ha4 as a variant on wys a wight in Hg. This method can readily cope with such difficult situations, typically found in large and complex traditions: And of so parfit wys a wight ywroght of so parfit wys in what wise was wys a wight was a wight The parallel segmentation method, to be discussed next, cannot handle overlaps among variants, and would require the individual variants to be split into pieces.

Because creation and interpretation of double end-point attachment apparatus will be lengthy and difficult it is likely that they will usually be created and examined by scholars only with mechanical assistance.

The Parallel Segmentation Method

This method differs from the double end-point attachment method in that all variants at any point of the text are expressed as variants on one another. In this method, no two variations can overlap, although they may nest. Thus, the concepts of a base text and of a lemma become unnecessary: the texts compared are divided into matching segments all synchronized with one another. This permits direct comparison of any span of text in any witness with that in any other witness. It is also very easy with this method for an application to extract the full text of any one witness from the apparatus.

This method will (by definition) always be satisfactory when there are just two texts for comparison (assuming they are in the same language and script). It will also be useful where editors do not wish to privilege a text as the base or when editors wish to present parallel texts. It will become less convenient as traditions become more complex and tension develops between the need to segment on the largest variation found and the need to express the finest detail of agreement between witnesses.

In the parallel segmentation method, each segment of text on which there is variation is marked by an app element; each reading is given in a rdg element; if it is desired to single out one reading as preferred, it may be tagged lem: Experience Experiment Eryment though noon Auctoritee Were in this world ...

This method cannot be used with external apparatus: it must be used in-line. Note that apparatus encoded with this method may be translated into the double end-point attachment method and back without loss of information. Where double-end-point-attachment encodings have no overlapping lemmata, translation of these to the parallel segmentation encoding and back will also be possible without loss of information.

For economy, the witnesses to the reading most widely attested need not be stated. Since all manuscripts must be represented in all apparatus entries, it will be possible for an application to read a listWit declaring all the witnesses to the text and then calculate which witnesses have not been named. In the example below, only La and Ra2 are identified explicitly with a reading; an application might successfully infer from this that Experience, whose witnesses are not given, must be attested by El and Hg. To avoid confusion, however, witnesses may be omitted only for a single reading. Experience Experiment Eryment though noon Auctoritee Were in this world ...

Alternatively, the witnesses for every reading may be stated, as in the first example.

As noted, apparatus entries may nest in this method: if an imaginary fifth manuscript of the text read Auctoritee, though none experience, the variation on the individual words of the line would nest within that for the line as a whole: Auctoritee, though none experience Experience Experiment Eryment though thogh thouh noon Auctorite none auctorite

Parallel segmentation cannot, however, deal very gracefully with variants which overlap without nesting: such variants must be broken up into pieces in order to keep all witnesses synchronized.