intro to latex

What is LATEX? Useful packages Editing LATEX files Miscellaneous notes

Doing Linguistics in LATEXA fairly quick introduction

Paul Hagstrom

Linguistics ProgramDept. of Romance Studies

Boston University

May 28, 2008

Paul Hagstrom Doing Linguistics in LATEX


1 What is LATEX?Basic LATEXThe structure of a LATEX document

2 Useful packagesBibliography managementLinguistic examplesTree diagramsPresentations

3 Editing LATEX filesEditorsBasic LATEX editingSemanticsTables

4 Miscellaneous notes



LATEX

LATEX is a typesetting system.It is not a word processor.It is free. It is mature. It is actively developed.Documents are written in plain text files.Writing is more about what you mean, and less about how itlooks.It is very extensible and many things linguists need to do areavailable as add-ons.It has a bit of a learning curve.



LATEX source

A LATEX source file for a very short paper:

\documentclass{article}\title{The word order of Japanese}\author{Paul Hagstrom}\begin{document}\maketitle\section{Introduction}Japanese is the primary language spoken in Japan.\section{Conclusion}In Japanese, the verb comes at the end. vgfhgfhgfhgf. gfhgfhgf\end{document}



LATEX output

This is the result:

The word order of Japanese

Paul Hagstrom

May 28, 2008

1 Introduction

Japanese is the primary language spoken in Japan.

2 Conclusion

In Japanese, the verb comes at the end. vgfhgfhgfhgf. gfhgfhgf

1



Macros

Much of the action in a LATEX document happens in the use ofmacros. These are instructions that start with a backslash (\)character. For example, the macro \ldots will produce . . . ,and \LaTeX will produce LATEX (in the official way).A LATEX document begins with a \documentclass instruction,that identifies the type of document being produced. Themost common is probably article, but there are also classesfor other things (books, reports). By setting the documentclass, you set various things about how sections are numberedand typeset, how title pages are produced, etc.



Preamble

After the \documentclass{article} instruction, otherinformation about the document appears. This section isreferred to as the preamble.For example, the \title{Title} macro designates the title ofthe paper, \author{Author} designates the author.Some macros take an argument, like \title and author do.The argument is specified after the macro in braces. Somemacros, like \LaTeX and \ldots do not need an argument.You can also define your own macros, or use packages in thepreamble.



Packages

Packages define new macros, over and above the basic macrosincluded in LATEX. These provide specialized commands toaccomplish various useful things, like drawing trees, aligningglosses, improving the looks of tables, and many other things.Most of the specialized Linguistics-related things we do aredefined in packages.Usual installations of LATEX make a very large number ofpackages available for use.Any packages not already installed can usually be downloadedand installed pretty easily.Writing your own macros and packages is also relatively easy.



Defining your own commands

If you can think of a macro that would make things easier, butwhich doesnt already exist, it is easy to create them.It is nice to italicize the wh part of the phrase wh-word.To italicize something, you can either write\textit{this is italic} or \emph{this is italic}.

Note the semantics. \textit marks italic, \emphmarks emphatic (which is often italic, but couldinstead be red). It seems to me that the wh part ofwh-word is properly italic, not emphatic.

I generally define a macro \wh to set wh in italics.

\newcommand{\wh}{\textit{wh}}

Then, \wh-word comes out as wh-word.



Using packages

In the preamble, you will often have several commands like

\usepackage{pst-jtree}\usepackage{natbib}\usepackage{gb4e, cgloss}\usepackage{comment}\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}\usepackage{mathptmx}\usepackage{soul}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{stmaryrd}

These extend the basic LATEX system to include all kinds ofother useful macros or typesetting behaviors. Ill talk aboutthese more individually as we continue.



The document

After the preamble, the document itself begins with

\begin{document}

The first thing that happens is generally the following, whichtransforms the information entered in with \title, \author,and \date into a standard title block or page.

\maketitle

And, when the masterpiece is finished, it ends with

\end{document}



Crossreferencing

Sections and subsections are introduced with the \sectionand \subsection commands. They are automaticallynumbered. You can attach a label to the section number andrefer to it by name elsewhere (meaning you are then free toshue things around).This is accomplished by adding a \label command.

\section{Name of section} \label{nomenclature}

Then, in the text, you can recall the section number like this:

As we saw in section \ref{nomenclature}, \ldots



Bibliography management

One of the single most annoying parts of writing a paper ismanaging the bibliography.Do not do this by hand. You will make errors and you willwaste a lot of time that could be much better spent.The way bibliography management is usually accomplished inLATEX is with BibTeX.Outside of LATEX, you will want bibliography managementsoftware. I use BibDesk for the Mac, which is excellent (andfree).http://bibdesk.sourceforge.net/



BibDesk



Citations

Each reference in your BibTeX database has an identifier. Iusually call them things like chomsky1995 though you cancall them whatever you want, so long as they are unique.To insert a citation in running text, you use\citet{chomsky1995}, which results in a citation likeChomsky (1995).To insert a citation within parentheses, you use\citep{chomsky1995}, which results in a citation more likethis (Chomsky 1995).There are some extended citation commands that I usuallydefine, lifted from the style sheet of Semantics & Pragmatics,that allow use of \pgcitet{chomsky1995}{48} to getChomsky (1995:48), and \posscitet{chomsky1995} forChomskys (1995). See next slide.



Extensions to citation commands

You can put these in the preamble to extend the citationcommands. (These require sp.bst as well.)\usepackage{natbib}\bibpunct[: ]{(}{)}{;}{a}{}{,}\newcommand{\BIBand}{\&}\providecommand{\doi}[1]{\href{http://dx.doi.org/#1}{doi:#1}}\setlength{\bibsep}{0pt}\setlength{\bibhang}{0.25in}\bibliographystyle{sp}\newcommand{\posscitet}[1]{\citeauthor{#1}s (\citeyear{#1})}\newcommand{\possciteauthor}[1]{\citeauthor{#1}s}\newcommand{\pgposscitet}[2]{\citeauthor{#1}s (\citeyear{#1}:~#2)}\newcommand{\secposscitet}[2]{\citeauthor{#1}s (\citeyear{#1}:~$\S$#2)}\newcommand{\pgcitealt}[2]{\citealt{#1}:~#2}\newcommand{\seccitealt}[2]{\citealt{#1}:~$\S$#2}\newcommand{\pgcitep}[2]{(\citealt{#1}:~#2)}\newcommand{\seccitep}[2]{(\citealt{#1}:~$\S$#2)}\newcommand{\pgcitet}[2]{\citeauthor{#1} (\citeyear{#1}:~#2)}\newcommand{\seccitet}[2]{\citeauthor{#1} (\citeyear{#1}:~$\S$#2)}



The natbib package

The standard citation and bibliography format used by BibTeXis the one often used in other sciences, where citations aresimply indicated by a number [1], and listed by number in thebibliography.These are not generally what we want in Linguistics papers.To get the more standard Linguistics citation styles, add thefollowing to the preamble:

\usepackage{natbib}

This will give you citations in the author-year format instead.



Producing the bibliography

At the end, generating the bibliography is easy. Just:

\bibliography{general-linguistics-utf8}

In the example above, the name of the bibliography databaseis general-linguistics-utf8, which is where BibTeX will searchfor the references.

In order to get the references right, LATEX needs to be run a couple of times. Often, theediting programs you use will do this automatically. What it does is: runs LATEX on thefile once, to collect a list of all the things you refer to, then runs BibTeX on the list toget the references for all of them, and then runs LATEX again to insert the referenceswhere they belong (in the inline citations and in the bibliography at the end).

The style the bibliography appears in is governed by the\bibliographystyle macro. I usually use the one fromSemantics & Pragmatics (which is in a file called sp.bst),although there is also a popular one based on the LinguisticInquiry style as well.



Numbered examples

Numbering linguistic examples in the way with which we arefamiliar is not a built-in behavior of LATEX, so we need apackage to help out with this.There are a few package options. Probably the simplest one islinguex, although the one I generally use is gb4e.To use linguex, you include the following in your preamble:\usepackage{linguex}

Then, you enter examples like this:\ex. \a. This is an example. \label{example}\b. *This example an is.

This will result in something like:(1) a. This is an example.

b. *This example an is.



Glossing examples

Lining up glosses is one of the main things that made me turnto LATEXit is a pain in the neck to do this properly in Word,but it is easy with linguex (or cgloss).To line up glosses, you use the \exg macro instead of \ex,and provide three lines. The first line is the target language,the second line is the word-by-word gloss, and the third line isthe paraphrase. The first and second lines will be lined upbased on where the spaces are.\exg. *Wen liebt seine Mutter?\\Whom loves his mother\\Who does his mother love?

(2) *WenWhom

liebtloves

seinehis

Mutter?mother

Who does his mother love?



Drawing trees

Drawing syntactic trees can also be a pain in the neck in Word.There are a few different packages available for drawing treesin LATEX.

jTree This is the one I use. The syntax can be kind ofcomplicated, but it is concise.

qTree This one can do simple trees pretty easily.



Source for a tree with qtree

A LATEX source file for a tree in qtree:

\documentclass{article}\usepackage{qtree}\begin{document}\Tree[.IP [ Roses ].NP_i[.I\1 [ are ].I\0[.VP t_i[ [ going ].V\0

\qroof{out of style}.PP].V\1 ].VP ].I\1 ]\end{document}



LATEX output

This is the result:

IP

NPi

Roses

I

I0

are

VP

ti V

V0

going

PP

out of style

1



A simpler tree with qtree

\documentclass{article}\usepackage{qtree}\begin{document}\Tree[.S This [.VP [.V is ]

\qroof{a simple tree}.NP ] ]\end{document}

S

This VP

V

is

NP

a simple tree

1



Source for a tree with jTree

A LATEX source file for a tree in jTree:

\documentclass{article}\usepackage{pst-jtree-beta}\begin{document}\jtree[xunit=2.45em,yunit=1.4em,dirA=(1:-1),nodesep=0]\def\\{[labelgapb=-4pt]}%\def\V{$\rm \overline V$}%\! = {S}{S}!a ^{and} ^{S}:({NP}{Fred}) {\V}:({V}\\{knows}) {NP}{a man} ^[scaleby=3.5 1,branch=\blank]{NP}@A3 !b ^{S}:({NP}{who}) {\V}@A2({V}\\{repairs}).\!a = :({NP}{John}) {\V}@A1{V}\\{sells}.\!b = {washing machines}.\nccurve[angleB=150,ncurvB=1.4]{A2:b}{A3:t}\nccurve[angleB=135,ncurvA=.5,ncurvB=2.6]{A1:b}{A3:t}\endjtree\end{document}



LATEX output

This is the result:

S

S and S

NP

Fred

V

Vknows

NP

a manNP

S

NP

who

V

Vrepairs

NP

John

V

Vsells

washing machines

1



A simpler tree with jTree

\documentclass{article}\usepackage{pst-jtree-beta}\begin{document}\jtree \! = {S} :{This} {VP}:{V}({is}) {NP}({a simple tree}) .\endjtree\end{document}

S

This VP

V

is

NP

a simple tree

1



A tree with movement arrows in jTree

\documentclass{article}\usepackage{pst-jtree-beta} \begin{document}\jtree \! = {S} :{John}@S {VP}:{V}({fell}) {NP}({t}@T ) .\nccurve[dirA=(-1:-1),dirB=(-1:-5),ncurv=1.2]

{->}{T}{S}\endjtree \end{document}

S

John VP

V

fell

NP

t

1



Technical note about pstricks

Adobe created the PostScript language to communicate withprinters. PostScript includes commands defining points, lines,curves, colors.Many graphics packages for LATEX (for, e.g., movement arrows)generate PostScript instructions using the pstricks package.PDF has since became standard, but PDF does not recognizePostScript instructions.If you compile LATEX directly to PDF (pdflatex) nopstricks-generated graphics will appear.Most editors have a way to first compile a PostScript file andthen distill it to a PDF file (which preserves the graphics).



title

You can also use LATEX as a replacement for PowerPoint, to dopresentations.This presentation is created using beamer, which is probablythe most popular presentation package.The result is a PDF file that can be presented with most PDFviewers (Acrobat, Preview, Skim).There is a presenter called KeyJNote that I hope to exploremore, which should run on various platforms, and allowsinteresting slide transitions.



LATEX editors

LATEX files are just text, so you can edit them with any textediting program.There are several front-ends available, however, that can helpmake the process a lot easier. Ideally, your editor will have:

syntax coloringbracket balancingautocompletionmacro definitions (keyboard shortcuts)preview capabilitypdfsync support

On the Mac, I use TextMate (which is nice, but not free).Most people use TeXShop (which is free, and also nice).AUCTeX is a plugin for emacs (like Aquaemacs).texmaker is a cross-platform (java) editor that worksanywhere, quite complete.



Basic LATEX editing

In general, whitespace does not matter. Putting 1, 3, or 47spaces between words does not change how far apart they arerendered.Paragraphs are separated by blank lines.You can put in comments (and if you do somethingcomplicated, you shouldotherwise you will forget why youdid it that way) by using the % character. Everythingincluding and following the % will be ignored by the compiler.Some characters are special, like \, %, &. If you want to typethose, you generally need to escape them by putting a \ infront of them (e.g., \% yields %, and % by itself starts acomment).



Basic LATEX editing

Em-dashes are constructed by typing three hyphens (--- yields). En-dashes are constructed by typing two hyphens (--yields .)Left and right quote marks are typed differently: Left isbacktick () and right is quote (). Quotation marks are justtwo of them together (indeed yields indeed). You donot want to use on both sides, or it will look goofy.Macros like \LaTeX will sometime eat the following space. Itis often necessary to put macros inside their own group, like{\LaTeX}. This is particularly important when glossing (sincespaces are important for lining things up).



Semantic formulae

LATEX (and TEX) is particularly well-suited to typingmathematical and logical formulae.There is a special math environment that you put LATEX intowhen typesetting these.To specify math mode you can either put $ at the beginningand end of the math section, or put the whole thing inside theargument of \ensuremath.In math mode, ^{x} produces a superscript x , _{x} producesa subscript x , and letters are treated as variables (italicized).Spacing ceases to matter, everything is close up.Symbols like (\rightarrow) and (\exists) and (\forall) and (\alpha) can be used.If you need text within math mode, you mark it off with the\mbox macro like this: x .x sings.($\forall{x}.x\mbox{ sings.}$).



Semantic formulae

A particularly useful command that I always define is one thatwill set the semantic evaluation function. This requires thatyou also have \usepackage{stmaryrd} in your preamble aswell, since it defines the \llbracket and \rrbracketcharacters.\newcommand{\evalfun}[2][]{\ensuremath{\left\llbracket \mbox{#2} \right\rrbracket^{#1}}}

With this defined, you can just type\evalfun{everyone sings} and get Jeveryone singsK, ortype \evalfun[w,g]{everyone sings} and getJeveryone singsKw ,g .



Tables in LATEX

Making tables in LATEX is pretty straightforward.You first designate a table environment with\begin{tabular} and \end{tabular}.Inside the tabular environment, you use & to separatecolumns, and \\ at the end of each row.The \begin{tabular} macro requires that you also specifythe structure of your table, and how it aligns with thesurrounding text. The first parameter sets the baseline (e.g.,[t] for top), and the second is a list of columns andformatting instructions (e.g., {rcl}, which means that thefirst column is right-justified, the second is centered, and thethird is left-justified.)



Tables in LATEX

right A B labelA ex * ok interesting!

B example ok * less interesting!

\begin{tabular}[t]{r|cc|l}right & A & B & label \\ \hlineA & * & ok & interesting! \\B & ok & * & less interesting!\end{tabular}



Using Times

Out of the box, LATEX will provide you with documents set inComputer Modern. So, when you look at the document youproduced, you will find that it just screams I was made withLATEX! Personally, Im not a big fan of that. Computer Modernlooks ok, but I have been working with Word for so long previouslythat Ive come to like the look of Times.\usepackage{mathptmx}%times



Using smileys and frownies

Ive occasionally wanted to use , and /. To get access tothose:

\usepackage{wasysym} % for \smiley and \frownie

Then, you can place a smiley with {\smiley} and a frowniewith {\frownie}. The wasysm package provides othersymbols as well, but these are the ones I use so far.



Convenience macros

When glossing, I like to set syntactic morphemes in small caps,and I set up a macro to allow me to type {\ACC} rather than\textsc{acc} or \caps{acc} (the latter version depends onthe soul package).To do this, you just define a new command. The way to dothat is with the \newcommand command.

\newcommand{\ACC}{\caps{acc}}

Any time after encountering the line above, LATEX will turn any\ACC it sees into \caps{acc}. Capitalization matters, so \ACCis different from \acc or \Acc. I have defined a whole slew ofthese (\NOM, \TOP, \PAST, . . . ).



UTF8

For special characters like , , and more exotic ones like , it isvery useful to have your files in a Unicode format. UTF8 is themost straightforward form of this.LATEX itself is mostly Unicode compatible.Be sure your editor can save in UTF8 format.Include the following in your preamble.

\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

I have not had much luck with XeTeX, particularly incombination with pstricks.


What is LaTeX?Basic LaTeXThe structure of a LaTeX document

Useful packagesBibliography managementLinguistic examplesTree diagramsPresentations

Editing LaTeX filesEditorsBasic LaTeX editingSemanticsTables

Miscellaneous notes