Dating an unattributed Gagauz text: admissible and inadmissible evidence
A candidate must place an unattributed Gagauz prose text in the prescribed periodization and gives three reasons: the text is printed in Cyrillic letters, it contains the loanword 'kolhoz', and its sentences are long. The anthology the text comes from states in its preface that older texts have been repunctuated and respelled to current conventions, and that it prints works 'from the first printed Gagauz books to the present'. The candidate concludes that the text predates the creation of a standard literary language. The teacher must decide whether to award the periodization point (3 of 10), and how to comment. The class has studied the periods but has not discussed how editors change texts. The candidate is strong on textual analysis and weak on context; the teacher wants the feedback to protect the first skill while correcting the second.
1. Evaluate the three pieces of evidence and decide what score out of 3 the periodization claim deserves.
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- Cyrillic printing. Inadmissible here. Script belongs to the edition, and the preface explicitly says older texts were respelled, so orthography in this anthology is an editorial layer, not the author's. The same work can appear in different scripts across editions.
- 'kolhoz'. Admissible and relevant, but it points the other way: the borrowing belongs to the Soviet period or to a later text about it. It also dates the referent rather than necessarily the composition, since a later story can put the word in a character's mouth.
- Long sentences. Genre and register feature, weak on its own, and repunctuation can change it.
So the candidate has one admissible clue, and it contradicts the conclusion. The reasoning is circular: Cyrillic is treated as proof of age, age as proof of pre-standard status. Score 1/3, credit given for using internal evidence at all; 0 would suggest the attempt was worthless and would discourage the very habit the subject needs.
2. Give a four-step procedure for dating an unattributed text, and say what would make the candidate's claim unfalsifiable.
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- Separate layers. Establish what belongs to the author and what to the edition: read the preface and edition statement, and compare the same text in a second edition where one exists.
- Rank internal evidence. Lexicon and realia first (dated institutions, technologies, offices), then morphology and syntax archaisms, then genre conventions, then references to datable events. Weak features such as sentence length come last, if at all.
- Add external evidence. Author attribution, publication venue, paratext, catalogue or library records.
- Require convergence. At least two independent clues must agree, and the answer should state residual uncertainty rather than a single confident date.
The claim becomes unfalsifiable when its only support is evidence compatible with every period (long sentences), or when disconfirming evidence is explained away with no independent support - for example, dismissing 'kolhoz' as 'the author anticipating later events'. A date that cannot be wrong cannot be credited.
3. The candidate's analysis of the passage is excellent. How should the teacher protect that while correcting the contextual error?
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Keep the two criteria apart on the feedback sheet and say so in the comment: full analysis marks, reduced period marks, with one sentence explaining that the two judgements are independent. A candidate who loses six marks without explanation will read the whole script as a failure and stop trusting the analysis judgement.
Then replace the correction with a counter-question: 'Which of your three reasons would survive if the anthology had modernised the spelling, and what would you need to check to decide?' This makes the student re-run the procedure rather than accept a date.
Finally, teach the distinction the class has not met: date of composition versus date of the edition. A five-minute comparison of one older text in two printings does more than a correction on a single script, because it turns an invisible editorial habit into an observable feature.