Controlled Vocabularies

The creation of a CV

When you frequently use a certain tier 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 Edit > Edit Controlled Vocabularies. The following dialog will appear:

Figure 2.31. Edit controlled vocabulary

Edit controlled vocabulary

  1. The CV being edited , the entries and the set language.
  2. Import & export options, link to an external CV.
  3. Annotation value as it is going to be filled in.
  4. A description of the entered value.
  5. Association with an ISO Data Category.
  6. Buttons to move the selected entry up/down, top/bottom. Undo/redo changes to the CV.


To create a new CV, do the following:

  1. Enter a CV Name and a description. ( Each language within a CV can have a different description)
  2. Click on the Add button
  3. Choose a language from the pull-down menu (see Setting language(s) for a CV for more info on setting a language.)
  4. Now enter each CV entry and its description.
  5. Confirm every entry addition by clicking on the Add button or by hitting Enter. When adding entries for an additional language, click Add to add a new entry, or click Change to add the entry next to an existing entry.

Note

The undo function in the CV dialog window only works as long as that window is active. Once it is closed changes cannot be undone any more.

By clicking More Options... (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 favourite colors is saved and used the next time you start ELAN.

Setting language(s) for a CV

New in version 4.7.0 is the option to set one or more languages for a CV. This allows you to have one CV that contains a certain vocabulary in both English and German, for instance. You can choose from nearly 7700 ISO specified languages.

Caution

This change in 4.7.0 introduced an incompatibility with earlier versions of ELAN; the structure of the .eaf changed to some extent. As a result, when opening a new .eaf in an older ELAN version, the entries of CV's will be missing!

By default, the language for a CV is set to 'undetermined (und)'. To change this, click the drop-down menu and select Edit Languages...

Figure 2.32. Edit CV Languages

Edit CV Languages

From the dialog that appears, select the desired language and click Change. The undetermined language in the upper drop-down menu will now be replaced with the chosen language. see Defining languages for your content to edit the list of available languages.

Figure 2.33. Edit CV Languages 2

Edit CV Languages 2

If you would like to add an additional language, select the desired language from the lower drop-down menu, and click Add afterwards. The chosen language will be added to the CV languages, and will be visible in the upper drop-down menu. When you are done adding or changing languages, click Close to close the dialog.

Figure 2.34. Edit CV Languages 3

Edit CV Languages 3

Back in the main CV dialog, you will now find the list of languages under the current CV (1). There is also a second column with the language label under 'Entries' (2). Select the language from the list (1) you want to add, change or delete entries for.

Figure 2.35. Edit CV Languages 4

Edit CV Languages 4

  1. The list of current languages linked to the CV
  2. Entries for the linked languages
  3. Annotation value and description as it is going to be filled in.
  4. Add/change/delete entries within the chosen language.


By clicking an empty field in the entries (2), you can now enter the required values (3). To add a new entry, enter the values and click Add (4). This will yield a new line in the entries. To add a value to an existing entry, as shown in the screenshot, click Change. Lastly, you can delete entries as before with the Delete button.

If you use a lot of multi-lingual CV's, you can also set the preferred default language to work with. More info about this can be found here: see Using CV's

Associating a CV entry with a Data Category

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 Edit in the ELAN main menu and select Edit Controlled Vocabularies.... In the window that now appears, click the Browse... button to the right of the ISO Data Category option. In the next window, select a category from the list and click Apply. Or you can add a category by clicking Add Categories; first select a profile in the left panel and then select a data category in the middle panel. Next, click on Apply to put the selected data category in the list of selected categories. Then click to highlight it and click Apply to associate it to the CV entry.

Figure 2.36. Local Data Category Selection

Local Data Category Selection


More information about the ISO DCR and how to use it can be found in Data categories.

Importing an existing CV

Instead of creating a Controlled Vocabulary again every time ELAN also supports the possibility to reuse existing CV's. A first way to achieve this is to use a template file that contains a CV when creating a new *.eaf file. (See Creating a new document) Alternatively you can import a CV for already existing files:

  1. select Edit > Edit Controlled Vocabularies
  2. Click on Import CV
  3. Select the template (.etf), .csv or .txt file from which you want to import a CV
  4. Choose Open
  5. Now all CV's 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:

Figure 2.37. Controlled vocabulary already exists warning

Controlled vocabulary already exists warning


  • Skip CV: ignore the CV from the template
  • Replace Existing CV: overwrite the existing CV with that from the template
  • Rename CV: opens a dialog asking you to give a new name for the imported CV
  • Merge CV's: entries from the imported CV that are not in an existing CV are imported.

Using an External CV

A created or imported controlled vocabulary is part of the current transcription and is therefore part of the .eaf file when the transcription is saved. However, there are situations in which a controlled vocabulary is shared between two or more transcriptions and change to that CV should be propagated to all transcription that use that CV. For this purpose, ELAN enables you to link to a controlled vocabulary that is either on your local or attached hard disk or somewhere on the network or the Internet:

  1. select Edit > Edit Controlled Vocabularies
  2. click External CV
  3. Do one of the following:
    • click on Browse... and browse to and select the file containing the External CV
    • enter a URL that point to an External CV somewhere on the Internet
  4. Click OK to make the link

Similar to the Import CV process, 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 (see Figure 2.37, “Controlled vocabulary already exists warning”).

The entries of an External CV cannot be edited nor their ISO Data Category. Also the order of the entries cannot be change. The possibility to add a color and shortcut key to an entry via the More Options... button is still there.

Exporting a CV

A CV can be exported by clicking the export .ecv button in the Edit Controlled Vocabularies window. This will open another window, in which you can select the CV's to be exported:

Figure 2.38. Export Controlled Vocabulary

Export Controlled Vocabulary

Finally, select a location to save the CV. The file will have the .ecv extension.

Associating a tier type with Controlled Vocabularies

Open the Change the Tier type dialog (via Type > Change tier type) and make a choice from the Use Controlled Vocabulary dropdown box:

Figure 2.39. Change tier type

Change tier type


Using CV's

When editing an annotation that belongs to a tier type associated with a CV, a drop down box appears, the suggest panel. Just select the value to be filled in:

Figure 2.40. Controlled vocabulary drop down box

Controlled vocabulary drop down box


Note

  • 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 Associating a CV entry with a Data Category), the annotation is also associated with that data category.

If you have a created a multi-lingual CV, you can set the preferred language to use by going to Options > Language for multilingual content. From there you will see a list of languages that you have used with a CV. Select the one preferred and afterwards, values you enter are in the CV-language chosen. When the default language changes, all Annotations which are associated with a CV entry will be adapted (if the selected language actually exists in the CV, and if the entry is not empty in that language).

Figure 2.41. Select language for multi-lingual CV

Select language for multi-lingual CV

More information about entering annotations from a CV and working with the Suggest Panel, see Entering annotations from a Controlled Vocabulary