Council-- I have a feeling this has probably come up before, but I thought
I'd ask here if there's a quick answer. Some of my students have decided to
upconvert a project to TEI and to apply `<s>` and `<w>` to do some
grammatical markup. And they're trying to figure out how to deal with
quoted phrases: Before they'd started the grammatical adventure, they'd
been orienting themselves to the various ways to mark quotation (`<said>`,
`<mentioned>`, `<q>`, etc.) and had worked out a good system for working
with <q>. Now that they're working inside `<s>` elements, though, they
discovered the hard way that they can't nest `<q>` inside `<s>`.
Before letting them go and rewrite the rules to make it valid for their
project for <q> sit in <s>, I found myself cautioning them that there may
be a better way. Here's what I wrote:
-
You've noticed that the TEI content model for the <s> element is
restrictive and does not permit the <q> element inside. True. And that
may seem "fubared", except that *none* of the elements used for
structuring "simple analytic mechanisms" (neither <s> nor its cousin <cl>,
and nor the somewhat more permissive <phr>) allow for <q> inside. That
exclusion appears to be deliberate, and I think it is because the <s>,
<cl>, <phr>, and <w> are a special set of elements that could *by
themselves with attributes* convey the information you're wanting to
deliver with <q>. Here's what I'd recommend then: Instead of <q>, find
its equivalent in an element native to Simple Analytic Mechanisms: I expect
that is <phr> for phrase, and add an @type and/or and @rend to indicate
you're signalling quotation marks. Work with Ch. 17 a while and I think
you'll see why this seems the wiser course.
I'm a little troubled by my own response, though, since `<mentioned>` is
permitted both inside and outside `<phr>`, so now I'm wondering why the
others aren't: I discover `<q>` isn't permitted inside `<phr>` for example.
I'll go digging for the history of this, but if anyone here has
perspective, I'd be grateful--I imagine this must come up and probably has
a lot on the main TEI list.
Thanks,
Elisa
--
Elisa Beshero-Bondar, PhD
Director, Center for the Digital Text
Associate Professor of English
University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg
Humanities Division
150 Finoli Drive
Greensburg, PA 15601 USA
E-mail: ebb8(a)pitt.edu
about.me/ebbondar
