Various 5 course guitar tablature sources ask for partial strums in which only some of the courses are to be strummed; unstrummed courses being indicated by dots (although the practice may, of course, be more widespread than suggested only by the tablatures with these dots).
A typical example is a G major chord (stopped on the 2nd and 5th courses) but with a dot on the first course indicating a strum of the lower 4 courses but without the first course strummed (eg Lobkowicz Ms OLIM Prague II Ms Kk77 fol 82v - Minuet). Is there any evidence that these were ever performed by using, say, the middle finger of the right hand (or even a spare left hand finger) to damp the unplayed course or is it simply a matter of precision in execution of the strum with the index finger? MH -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html