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LATEX for linguistics

Word for linguistics - LATEX - Presentation tips - Fun - Back to E-Ching's home

Starting LATEX - Common tasks - For linguistics - Bibliographies

Standard LATEX often falls short of linguists’ needs. But never fear. We stand onthe shoulders of (linguist) giants. This page is dedicated to their legacy.

Everyone needs – IPA, numbered examples with glosses, bibliographySyntax – treesPhonology – Optimality Theory, vowel charts, (trees)Semantics – symbols

After getting started you may find this .tex file interesting. It compiles into thisPDF.

Note for Lyx users

If you use LyX, the LyX Linguistics module adds some support fornumbered examples, glosses, OT tableaux and some semantic markup.

Trees

If a tool is listed here without special instructions, it’s a package included withstandard versions of LATEX. See Importing other people’s code.

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Qtree is the most popular way to draw syntactic trees.

PST-JTree is a relatively new package for drawing complex syntactic trees.It uses pstricks, so you have to run latex instead of pdflatex, or do some workif you need compatibility with XƎTEX.

Trees for phonology

PST-ASR is a relatively new package for drawing autosegmental trees. Ituses pstricks, so you have to run latex instead of pdflatex, or do some work ifyou need compatibility with XƎTEX.

Numbered examples with glosses

If a tool is listed here without special instructions, it’s a package included withstandard versions of LATEX. See Importing other people’s code.

gb4e (with cgloss4e) is the most common way to make numbered exampleswith glossing.

linguex does both numbered and glossed examples. It has shortercommands than gb4e but may conflict with other packages. Must be loadedbefore TIPA.

ExPex is a relatively new package for numbered examples with glossing.Plentiful formatting options make glossing a little more complicated. Note: The command is \include{expex}, not \usepackage{expex}.

covington is an older package for numbered examples with glossing. Itseems to be less used nowadays.

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IPA

If a tool is listed here without special instructions, it’s a package included withstandard versions of LATEX. See Importing other people’s code.

TIPA is the pure LATEX way to get IPA while typing plain text. You may preferto consult this chart instead of the full manual.

XƎTEX. To type actual IPA characters in your .tex file, run xelatex instead ofpdflatex. As a side benefit, XƎTEX enables access to non-LATEX fonts.Some work required to get compatibility with OTtablx, PST-JTree and PST-ASR.

Optimality Theory

If a tool is listed here without special instructions, it’s a package included withstandard versions of LATEX. See Importing other people’s code.

ot-tableau provides straightforward commands for getting perfectlyserviceable tableaux. Inputs and candidates automatically accept TIPA butUnicode also works perfectly if you’re using XƎTEX. Only a formattingmaniac like me would complain.

OTtablx makes beautiful tableaux with lots of options (though no cell shadingyet) and very simple commands. Inputs and candidates automaticallyaccept TIPA but Unicode also works perfectly if you’re using XƎTEX. It uses

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pstricks, so you have to run latex instead of pdflatex, or do some work if youneed compatibility with XƎTEX. Not in standard LATEX, and the usual link isdown, so download here.

OTableau is a program (Windows, Mac, Linux) that generates LATEX codefor tableaux from a standard spreadsheet format (CSV), as well asautomatic exclamation marks and winners. I haven’t tried it but others like it.Unfortunately can't handle dashed lines. Not in standard LATEX: downloadhere.

OT tableau generator is a website that generates (unfortunately) outdatedcode using the colortab package that is no longer included in TEX Live.

shade is a perl script that takes LATEX code and adds automatic cellshading and exclamation marks. It’s a cleanup tool rather than a completesolution, and may have been superseded by the other options above. Not instandard LATEX: download here.

Vowel charts

If a tool is listed here without special instructions, it’s a package included withstandard versions of LATEX. See Importing other people’s code.

vowel draws perfect vowel diagrams.

pst-vowel has more options, such as diphthong arrows.

Requires linguex, so it is presumably incompatible with otherpackages for numbered glossed examples like gb4e or ExPex.

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Uses pstricks so you have to run latex instead of pdflatex, and you mayhave to do some work to get compatibility with XƎTEX.

Symbols for semanticsMost symbols for semantics are available in standard LATEX, through math mode,amsmath or amssymb. Look them up at Detexify.

If a tool is listed here without special instructions, it’s a package included withstandard versions of LATEX. See Importing other people’s code.

stmaryrd (St Mary’s Road) has crucial symbols like double brackets –\llbracket, \rrbracket.

Last updated Wed, 03 Apr 2013 05:31:46 GMT

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