Text Representation and Textual Models

Text Representation and Textual Models

Dino
Buzzetti
Department of Philosophy, University of
Bologna
buzzetti@philo.unibo.it

1999

University of Virginia

Charlottesville, VA

ACH/ALLC 1999

editor

encoder

Sara
A.
Schmidt

The practice of text encoding, based on the Guidelines of the Text Encoding
Initiative,[TEI] has prompted the need of a critical reflection on the adequacy
of current encoding theory.[RMD] In its turn, the debate on the theory of markup
[RTWb, RTWa, BH] has elicited new investigations on markup schemes as document
grammars.[SH] Therefore, one central issue of markup theory seems to reside in
clarifying the relationship between document grammars and textual
structures.
A basic ambiguity hovers over the discussion on text encoding--an "inadvertent
shift" from document to textual structures, from textual representation to
textual model.[BR] It seems to lurk in the very definition of "what is markup"
endorsed by the TEI: if markup is defined as "all the information contained in a
computer file other than the 'text' itself," how can "'any' aspect of a text of
importance to a researcher" ever "be signalled by markup"? [BS,2] Either markup
represents that information which "'is not' part of the text"[CRdR,934] and is
'other' than text, or markup represents aspects of that information which "'is'
part of the text, and is 'the same as' text."[BR] But not both, unless 'text' is
taken in two different senses, as information "coded as characters or sequences
of characters,"[D,1] i.e. as a digital expression on the one hand, and as the
"content of the expression"[CRdR,934] on the other. The representation of any
information content is not the information content which is represented by that
representation and one should be wary of identifying textual structures with
document structures or document grammars.
Reference seems appropriate here to Hjelmslev's fourfold distinction between
"form" and "substance" respectively of the "expression" and the "content" of
discourse.[H,47-70] Hjelmslev's model bears the stamp of Saussure's notion of
the text as "a two-level signifier-signified construction" in the stress on the
"inseparability of expression and content," but also enables us to distinguish
between the form of the representation and the form of the content represented
thereby.[S,39] If we find "acceptable" a "very broad definition" of textual
structure as "the set of the latent relations among the parts" of a literary
work,[S,34] we should ask ourselves how such relations can be accounted for in
terms of the document grammar enforced by a certain encoding scheme. Is, for
instance, the OHCO model,[dRDMR] or any model appropriately "refining our notion
of text"[RMD] an adequate one? Can it provide a suitable data structure to
process textual information for text critical or interpretational purposes?
It has been argued that it is "difficult" for markup "to express structure that
is not a subset of character positions in the text,"[RTWa,9-10] and that it is
so precisely because markup "inherits"[RTWa,2] the "order of text,"[RTWa,10]
defined as the linear order of the string of characters in which it is embedded.
In an SGML-like "strongly embedded" kind of markup, the position within the
character string "is information bearing", whereas a "weakly embedded" kind of
markup is informative regardless its position and it could be placed
"out-of-line."[RTWa,3-4] All this means that SGML-based encoding "reduces the
structural properties of a text to the structural properties of a document,"[BR]
because "the properties" of the structures which this kind of markup can
describe "are largely derivative of the properties of the document," the linear
stream of characters "in which it is embedded."[RTWa,3-4] Again, the form of the
representation cannot be mistaken for the form of the content which is thereby
represented.
The structural properties of an encoded document expressed by means of a strongly
embedded markup scheme can therefore be described as essentially 'notational'.
The notational properties of decimal, as opposed to binary or any other form of
numerical notation, do not affect the arithmetical properties of numbers. In
other words, "markup is not a data model, it is a type of data
representation"[RTWa,16] and different forms of text representation should match
data models capable of expressing the set of latent relations constituting
textual structure.
Both text critical and interpretational procedures require non-linear models of
the text.[Ba, Bb] Variant readings of a complex textual tradition cannot, in
general, be represented in a linear way, neither can complex specimens of
authorial manuscripts. Competing interpretational perspectives can detect
concurrent textual structures. Also "historical text", or textual information
enabling historical enquiry, can be conceived as multi-layered and demands
non-linear models.[Ta,55-57] An "extended string" data type able to provide
non-linear data models for processing textual information has been introduced
precisely for this purpose.[Tb]
The extended string internal representation allows import/export of different
forms of marked-up data for the same data model, of different "formats" for the
same "formalism,"[J,75-76] and makes it possible to use concurrent encoded
representations depending on different interpretations of the same text; or to
combine encoded transcriptions of the several witnesses of a complex textual
tradition into a sort of "logical sum." [Ta,56]
The difference between encoding a running text representation and relating its
relevant segments to an external knowledge representation organized as a
database [Ta,55-57] can be related to the distinction between the form of the
expression and the form of the content. But in many cases the form of the
exppression reveals a structural feature of its content. That is why this
distinction is easily overlooked. What is then the conceptual status of markup?
Is it a sort of metalinguistic description, or is it a direct expansion of our
writing system employed to express intrinsic features of textual content? In the
latter case markup is to be thought of as an extension of text representation,
in the former as a separate and external representation of its structure.
This question has far-reaching implications, bearing as it does upon the capacity
of language to be self-reflexive, but more significantly here it concerns
directly the status of markup as a formal language and a document grammar.

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