When you frequently use a certain linguistic type with a limited number of annotation values, it might be a good idea to associate a Controlled Vocabulary (CV) with it. Such a CV consists of a number of predefined values that a user can choose from when editing an annotation, thus making the task of the annotator less error-prone. E.g. one can choose to create a controlled vocabulary for part of speech tagging, as the tags that are used often reoccur. In order to do this select
. The following dialog will appear:
To create a new CV, do the following:
Enter a CV Name and a description
Click on the
buttonNow enter each CV entry and its description.
Confirm every entry addition by clicking on the
button or by hittingThe undo function in the CV dialog window only works as long as that window is active. Once it is closed changes cannot be undone anymore.
By clicking
(not yet shown in the figure above) you can choose a color that will fill the lower part of every annotation frame containing the selected CV entry. Moreover, you can choose a shortcut key to edit an annotation with a single key stroke.The color chooser has four tabs. The last three contain different ways to choose a color, which is subsequently displayed in the lower part of the window. In the first tab you can add or insert the color displayed below and you can copy, paste and delete the selected color. The list of favorite colors is saved and used the next time you start ELAN.
In ELAN it is possible to associate an entry of a controlled
vocabulary with a data category of the ISO Data Category Repository
(DCR). To do so click on ISO Data Category
option. In the next window (Figure 5.24, “Local Data Category Selection”), first select a
profile in the left panel and then select a data category in the
middle panel. Finally click on Apply to associate the selected data
category to the CV entry.
More information about the ISO DCR and how to use it can be found in the section called “Data categories”.
Instead of creating a Controlled Vocabulary again every time
ELAN also supports the possibility to reuse existing CVs. A first
way to achieve this is to use a template file that contains a CV
when creating a new *.eaf
file. (See the section called “Creating a new document”) Alternatively you can
import a CV for already existing files:
select
Click on
Select the template from which you want to import a CV
Choose
Now all CVs that are stored in the selected template file will be imported
If you try to import a CV with the same name as an already existing CV a dialog will pop up asking what to do:
: ignore the CV from the template
: overwrite the existing CV with that from the template
: opens a dialog asking you to give a new name for the imported CV
: entries from the imported CV that are not in an existing CV are imported.
A CV can be exported by saving the current file as a template. (See the section called “Saving a selection as .eaf file”)
When editing an annotation that belongs to a linguistic type associated with a CV, a drop down box appears. Just select the value to be filled in:
It is possible to by-pass the controlled vocabulary constraints by holding shift and double clicking on the active annotation (right clicking and selecting “Modify annotation value” while holding shift does the same).
If a CV entry is associated with a data category of the ISO DCR (see the section called “Associating a CV entry with a Data Category”), the annotation is also associated with that data category.