Glossary

According to §11 of the Sorb/Wend Law, public buildings and institutions, streets, paths, squares, bridges and placename signs as well as signs indicating these things must be bilingual. However, the wording "public buildings and institutions" is not further elaborated and is therefore open to interpretation. Due to this a three category system was implemented. An element in the linguistic landscape which is clearly and explicitly mentioned in the Sorb/Wend Law (including but not limited to placename signs, street name signs and wayfairing signs) is categorized as "yes". Since public buildings and institutions are not well defined, institutions (schools, administrative buildings, police stations, fire stations, and so on) and signs therefrom are categorized as "unclear". Finally, elements of the linguistic landscape that are not mentioned in the Sorb/Wend Law are categorized as "no".

This defintion comes from the research done by Mechthild Reh (2004). "Texts in which different parts of the overall information are each rendered in a different language are said to display complementary multilingualism, since knowledge of all the languages involved is required to understand the whole message” (Reh 2004, 14).

This defintion comes from the research done by Mechthild Reh (2004). “The term ‘‘duplicating multilingual writing’’ refers to those practices in which exactly the same text is presented in more than one language.” (Reh 2004, 8)

This defintion comes from the research done by Mechthild Reh (2004). "The term ‘‘fragmentary multilingualism’’ is used for multilingual texts in which the full information is given only in one language, but in which selected parts have been translated into an additional language or additional languages.” (Reh 2004, 10)

This defintion comes from the research done by Mechthild Reh (2004). "Multilingual writing on stationary objects is termed overlapping if only part of its information is repeated in at least one more language, while other parts of the text are in one language only" (Reh 2004, 12). An example of a sign with overlapping translations can be found here.