SIL FieldWorks Language Explorer
Last corporate release: version 2.0, released December 2007.
New Entry Dialog
One of the field linguist's most frequent tasks is entering new entries into the lexical database. Accordingly, Language Explorer features a special dialog box designed to rapidly add lexemes, while providing special help for entering affixes.
Demo Movies
Screenshots
In the screenshot, we are entering a stem. Note the following:
- By default, the grammatical category is labeled <Not Sure>. Just because we have a field for grammatical category, we don't want the user to feel like they have to fill it in if they don't know enough yet.
- If you need a grammatical category that is not currently in your inventory
of categories, you can choose "more..." to bring up a catalog
of grammatical categories based on the
GOLD ontology. (See here
for more information on grammatical categories in Language Explorer.)
At the bottom of the dialog, the "Similar Entries" area shows lexical entries which match the Lexeme Form or gloss in some field. This is designed to help avoid adding the same entry multiple times by mistake. Clicking "Go to similar entry" closes the New Entry dialog box and displays the "similar" entry for editing.
In the following screenshot, we are entering a derivational affix.
In this screenshot, we are entering an inflectional affix.
If we click on the "Assistant" button (see above), Language Explorer brings up a special tool designed to help you gloss the inflectional affix (see below). This also automatically makes appropriate additions to the inflection features of the project and the new entry.
