Controlled Vocabulary in same tier as general speech flow
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Controlled Vocabulary in same tier as general speech flow
We want to be able to use controlled vocabularies (or macros) in the same tiers as the general speech flow. Example: "this is an eksempel <Norwegian>" where we want to choose words or labels like <Norwegian> from a fixed list like the Controlled Vokabulary.<br>Today the only possibility for using Controlled Vocabulary is to use it in a separate tier.<br><br>Kristin<br>
Re: Controlled Vocabulary in same tier as general speech flow
Indeed this is currently not possible; controlled vocabularies are in principle used on tiers where the user wants to limit the set of values (and where the user doesn't want to type them over and over again).
Your intended use case isn't quite clear to me. Is it for inserting a value from a set anywhere within typed text, or just to append a label to a fragment of speech? The user is free to design her or his own annotation scheme or conventions, but I wonder what the advantage of your approach would be. If you would put the "Norwegian" etc. labels on a symbolically associated tier of the speech tier you would have the two nicely separated, which can prove convenient when searching, filtering, exporting etc. You could even start with the speech on one tier, the CV label on another tier and then use the Tier->Merge Tiers... function with the "concatenate" option to create the kind of tier that you wish to have (currently only available for independent tiers).
But maybe I have a wrong impression of the way you wish to use the combination of free text and controlled vocabulary?
-Han
Re: Re: Controlled Vocabulary in same tier as general speech flow
Thank you very much for the answer, I will now try to clarify what we want to achieve by using the controlled vocabulary. We actually want to do both of the things you mention, both to insert a value from a set anywhere within typed text, and to append a label to a fragment of speech. I see your point concerning the second type of use - here it is not crucial to have the labels in a seperate tier. But the first type of use is still a bit problematic for us.
What we want to do, concretely, is to insert events like laughter, moaning and clicks in the same tier as the general speech flow. These events are not linguistic in the strict sense, but they definitely contribute with meaning to the discourse, just like words, and we therefore find it misleading to have them in a separate tier. I don't know whether you are familiar with Transcriber, but there, this is possible.
Of course, we could make up our own conventions and agree on a set of events and ways to annotate them. But if we have to annotate these things manually over and over again, it will take much time, and it will also be easy to make mistakes.
If it is not possible to use the controlled vocabulary the way we wish to, do you know of any other way we could achieve what we want?
Release of ELAN 4.3.0
