FLEx 1
Nathan Eversole
Juliet Morgan
Location: Library 315A
Week 1: Tuesday, June 17-Friday, June 20
Period 1: 8:30-10:00 am
FieldWorks Language Explorer (FLEx) is a linguistic database for lexicographical and text data collection and analysis. In this workshop, we will introduce the software, beginning with the basics, though we particularly focus on creating and editing the lexicon and interlinear texts. We will introduce and orient participants with how to navigate FLEx and how to create, open, and back up a project. We will also familiarize participants with basic data entry tasks: creating and editing lexical entries; creating text entries and editing the baseline, glosses, and morphemes; adding lexical entries from a text; printing texts; and adding audio files and images to lexical and text entries.
Before the first class, participants should download and install FLEx 8.0.10: http://fieldworks.sil.org/download/fw-8010 . No other software is needed for this class. Sample data sets and handouts with links to other useful software will be provided.
Participants will leave the class with a basic understanding of the program, which we hope will encourage them to further explore the many possibilities of FLEx for language documentation, description, and revitalization work.
Tasks
GENERAL: How to navigate the FLEx interface and getting used to the terminology (navigation panes, menus, fields, tabs, tools etc.) and just generally what each tool (lexicon, texts & words, etc.) is and what it can do, showing a few finished products from FLEx, maybe from a few of the different tools, just to get people excited about the possibilities.
LEXICON: Largely focused on lexicon edit, browse, dictionary. Creating a new lexicon entry, understanding the fields involved and what is best to minimally add for a new entry (lexeme, gloss, definition, morpheme type, category/grammatical info, source), how to see and un-hide hidden fields (since 'source' is automatically hidden), deleting a lexicon entry, understanding what some of the other fields are for (sense, variant, allomorph, semantic domain). Inserting an audio file or image.
TEXTS & WORDS: Largely focused on interlinear texts. Creating a new text entry, filling out the info tab, entering a new text into baseline tab, glossing and adding categories in the gloss tab, adding a free translation, and maybe a small amount of analyzing morphemes (this gets complicated so quickly!) in the analyze tab. Also go over the print view and how to print a text. Adding a lexical entry from a text. Deleting a text. Some introduction to what the concordances can do, after you've built up a database.
GRAMMAR, NOTEBOOK, LISTS: Semantic domains in lists (useful for teaching materials, useful to talk about while discussing fields in lexical entry), grammar for setting up affixes for use in text analyses, and examples of what you use the notebook for and how you create a new record.