Category Archives: Software

Software that is of interest to academics and especially to linguists.

Ideophones around the web: ideophones and product naming

Posted on by
6

This long overdue instalment of Ideophones around the web features ideophones in the names of snappy new mobile apps from an Indian software startup.

I’d noticed long ago that the domain “ideophone.com” was registered by a domain name squatter, and I wondered whom they thought would be interested. A videophone company perhaps? Anyway that particular domain has been lying dormant for years now with one of those useless “what you need when you need it” templates on it.

Recently however a real company called “ideophone” has entered the scene: Ideophone.in. The people at Ideophone.in make mobile apps for commuting people — “redefining commute”, as they say themselves, with mobile apps that are journey- and location-aware. Some cool things about this company are the multilingual people behind it — they speak Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, English and Hindi — and the fact that their product names are inspired by ideophones.

Ideophonic apps

One of the products of this company is a digital metering app which shows time and distance travelled during rikshaw and taxi rides. Here’s what Sundar writes about the name of this app:

It sounded like a neat idea to name the app with an ideophone. It’ll evoke the same impression in people speaking different languages, right?

Given that the bulk of the Bangalore population speaks some Dravidian language or other, the choice fell on Suruk, which connoted diligence, speed, sharpness etc. signifying what Suruk does. And, it helped that www.suruk.com was available.

Product naming isn’t exactly my expertise (for that, I look to Fritinancy), but it is certainly not a bad idea to use ideophones to name your products. In fact the use of sound-symbolism in product names is quite a thing nowadays, with researchers from marketing and (psycho)linguistics weighing in on the issue (Klink 2001, Lowrey et al. 2007, Yorkston & Menon 2004). And with the linguistic sophistication displayed by the people behind Suruk, Pyka, and other apps, Ideophone is certainly a nice name for the company itself.

The good people at Ideophone.in credit this blog for inspiration. Folks, I’m surely happy to be of help, and I salute you! I’m looking forward to your new products. Meanwhile, if you want some ideophones, check out my thesis!

References

  1. Klink, R.R. 2001. “Creating meaningful new brand names: A study of semantics and sound symbolism.”
  2. Lowrey, T.M., and LJ Shrum. 2007. “Phonetic symbolism and brand name preference.” Journal of Consumer Research 34 (3): 406.
  3. Yorkston, E., and G. Menon. 2004. “A sound idea: Phonetic effects of brand names on consumer judgments.” Journal of Consumer Research: 43–51.

Zotero for Chrome and Safari

Posted on by
3

Here’s a quick tip for Zotero users who like to do their browsing in Chrome or Safari: you can install “Zotero Connectors” that will make Zotero recognize references in Chrome and Safari just like in Firefox. The Zotero developers are working on a standalone version, but these connectors can already talk to your Zotero library in Firefox. So if you, say, find yourself going to Chrome for its speed and nice interface, you can simply connect it with Zotero and use Firefox to host your local Zotero library until Zotero Standalone comes along.

Follow these steps:

  1. Make sure you have the latest version of Zotero (3.0 Beta currently)
  2. Install the Chrome or Safari connector for Zotero in the browser of your choice.
  3. Start Firefox and type about:config in the address bar. Within the options, search for “zotero”, locate the extensions.zotero.httpServer.enabled option and double-click to enable it. (See kb article here.)
  4. Restart Firefox as well as your other browser to get them linked up properly.
  5. Enjoy the goods of Zotero translators in Chrome or Safari! (Remember that Firefox has to be open for Chrome to recognise and save the reference.)

Quick Q&A

Huh? When was this cool feature added?
Work on the Standalone version started about a year ago. The connectors have been developed for use with Standalone, but in a streak of insight, the developers also allowed communication with the Firefox version of Zotero. This was never announced, which is why I’m devoting a post to this well kept secret!
Can I now install Zotero in Chrome or Safari?
No, this post describes a way to get Zotero support in Chrome or Safari. You still need to have your main Zotero library in Firefox. If you are adventurous, you can try the Standalone Alpha or Beta version and connect it in the same way.
What are Zotero translators?
Translators enable Zotero to sense when you’re on a site displaying bibliographic information that you can import into your library. Thousands of sites are supported. Translators allow one-click saving of references in your library; if a PDF is available, they even download it for you and automatically attach it to the entry in your library!
What if it doesn’t work?
Be sure that Firefox is open, otherwise Chrome won’t be able to sense and save items. Try the troubleshooting translator issues page. If that doesn’t work, you can ask for help in the Zotero forums, where a lot of helpful people hang out.

Transcription mode in ELAN

Posted on by
3

A new version of ELAN, the widely used tool for time-aligned annotation of linguistic data, was released today by the developers, Han Sloetjes and Aarthy Somasundaram. One of its major features is a whole new user interface for high-speed transcription. This interface is the outcome of a process of user consultation and usability testing at the MPI for Psycholinguistics led by Mark Dingemanse, Jeremy Hammond, and Simeon Floyd in close collaboration with the ELAN developers Han Sloetjes and Aarthy Somasundaram. In this post we outline the most important features of Transcription mode.

Transcription mode

Transcription Mode is a mode designed to increase the speed and efficiency of transcription work. The interface is keyboard-driven and minimizes UI actions. All annotations of a certain tier type are displayed in a vertical list for easy visual access. Transcription mode brings down the transcription work to the bare essentials: listen, type, listen, type, listen, type.

Note. Transcription mode presupposes that the initial segmentation of the recording is already done. The rationale for this is that the most efficient workflow for transcribing large amounts of linguistic data is a two-step process: first segmenting the recording into turns —also attributing turns to the appropriate speaker— (this can be done in Annotation mode or in the special purpose Segmentation mode), and then transcribing and translating these turns.

1. Setting it up

You can reach Transcription mode via the Options > Transcription mode menu. If you go to Transcription mode for the first time, a Settings dialog will come up. Here you can select the tier types to be used for up to three columns. Note that you select tier types, not individual tiers. This is because Transcription mode displays all annotations on all tiers of a certain type in a vertical column.

For the purposes of this description we will asssume that the user is working with a file that has four main tier types: po (practical orthography), tl (literal translation), tf (free translation), and vb (visible behaviour). Our example file contains tiers of these types for two participants, and the overall tier structure looks like this (tier names in bold, tier types in courier):

  • A_po po (practical orthography)
    • A_tl tl (literal translation)
    • A_tf tf (free translation)
  • A_vb vb (visible behaviour)
  • B_po
    • B_tl
    • B_tf
  • B_vb

In our example, we choose the type po (practical orthography) as the first column. We can leave it at that if we just want to work on the transcript. Or we can display up to two additional columns next to the primary one. In our example, we’ll add the literal translation type.

For the second and third columns we can only select tier types that are time-aligned with the first using the stereotype “Symbolic Assocation”. In our example, we can select tl (literal translation) and/or tf (free translation) as second and third columns. We cannot choose the tier type vb (visible behaviour) here, because it is not time-aligned with our primary column.

Having selected the tier types we want, we click “Apply”. Now the chosen tier types are displayed in vertical columns, and the two largest differences from the default Annotation mode become visible: (i) all annotations are displayed vertically (top to bottom) rather than horizontally (left to right), and (ii) columns display all annotations of a certain type. For instance, the po (practical orthography) column displays turns from both speakers A and B.

Note. Transcription mode presupposes that you use linguistic types to differentiate the types of information in your tiers. Thus the linguistic type of your free translation tier should be different from the linguistic type of your main transcription. This is necessary for any serious corpus work anyway — for instance, ELAN’s multiple layer search also relies on this. If you haven’t been using linguistic types yet, consider investing the time to bring your files up to speed. This will not only let you use Transcription mode, it will also allow complex corpus searches and in general make your data more structured. The best way to enforce proper use of linguistic types across your files is to use a template.

2. Using Transcription mode

Transcription mode is built for high-speed transcription work. It plays automatically so that you can start typing right away. You can hit TAB to replay, and if you finish typing you hit ENTER, which brings you to the next annotation, which is played automatically so that you can start typing right away… and so on. Transcription mode boils down the transcription process to the two most essential actions: listening and typing. Once you’ve set it up, you don’t need to worry about anything else.

You can use Transcription mode to do initial transcription of a segmented recording. For this you would use the simplest, one-column setup. You can also use it to work on translations if you already have transcriptions. For this you would display both tier types side by side. And of course you can do the transcription and translation work in one go. For this you would use the two-column setup and check the option to “Navigate across columns”.

The basic philosophy of Transcription mode is to make things as easy as possible for the transcriber. This is why it displays annotations in a table rather than on a timeline, plays automatically on selection, and moves to the next annotation without requiring additional clicks or key presses. It will also silently create child annotations if they don’t exist yet — merely clicking an empty cell (or moving there using the keyboard) creates an annotation and opens it for immediate editing. The user just has to make sure the relevant tiers exist for all participants, and Transcription mode takes care of the rest.

3. Essential shortcuts

Typing and playing back

  • ENTER saves the current annotation, moves to the next annotation, and plays this new annotation if the automatic playback option is selected. [Three for the price of one!]
  • TAB plays the current annotation. It acts as a play/pause key, so you can press it again to pause playback, and again to continue playing.
  • SHIFT+TAB plays back the current annotation from the start.

Moving around

  • UP and DOWN arrows move up and down within a column.
  • ALT+LEFT and ALT+RIGHT arrows move left and right across columns (and just because we know you’d try this, ALT+UP and ALT+DOWN also move up and down within a column)
  • Remember that ENTER automatically moves to the next annotation. The Navigate across columns setting controls whether you go down within a column or you move across columns (from left to right).

Using the mouse

  • Clicking on any annotation activates it for editing. The cursor will be placed close to where you clicked and you edit right away.
  • You can also use the mouse to select part of the waveform for playback. TAB will play/pause the selection.
  • Right click on annotation will give you an option to jump to the Annotation mode. This will allow you to finely manipulate annotation boundaries and then return to Transcription mode.

4. The settings explained

Below the video signal and above the waveform you find the normal playback buttons (Play, Play selection, Clear selection). (Though recall that you can simply use Tab for quick playback of the full annotation or the selection.) In this area there are two further options:

  • screen layout. This option determines whether the media and settings are displayed on the left side or on the right side of the screen. Clicking it flips the screen layout. Default: video, audio and settings on the left.
  • loop mode. This option is found to the right of the play/pause buttons. When checked it means that a selected annotation while constantly loop until a new annotation is selected. Default: unchecked.

Below the waveform your find a couple further options that you can use to customize the Transcription mode experience.

  • automatic playback of media. This controls whether the annotation is automatically played or not when you arrive at it. Default: checked.
  • show tier names. This controls whether tier names are shown within the list or not. If unchecked, colour coding distinguishes different tiers/participants, and hovering over an annotation will tell you the tier/participant name. (There is an additional choice to show colours in the cells themselves or only in the line number column.) Default: checked.
  • navigate across columns. This controls what annotation you move to after hitting Enter. If unchecked, you move only within a column (from top to bottom). If checked, you move across columns (from left to right). Default: unchecked.
  • always scroll the current annotation to the center. This mode keeps your current annotation always in the middle of the screen. Default: unchecked.

5. Layout and viewing

The layout of the transcription mode is designed to replicate the best aspects of a word processor and a spreadsheet – all the while allowing you access to the time-aligned video and audio signals.

  • The video column, which also includes the options and wav form, can be placed on the right or left. Press the screen layout button to toggle the video/settings column from left to right. The video can also be detached for viewing independent of the main window, for instance on a secondary monitor.
  • All of the columns are resizable: just mouse click and drag the boundaries to fit your desired widths.
  • You can order columns as you please. So once you have established your types you can then reorder them on the screen simply by dragging them to the desired location.
  • You can zoom in on the video signal in order to focus a particular part (also available in annotation mode). This works best with HD footage.
  • Font size of the columns is variable: you can change this in the settings dialog box.

6. Have (quick and easy) fun

We hope you enjoy this addition to the Elan toolset. It is designed to cut down on the many hours it takes to do detailed transcriptions and we feel that you will find it an indispensable part of your workflow.

We welcome your comments and feedback!

(This post was co-written by Mark Dingemanse & Jeremy Hammond and appears in slightly different form in the help function of ELAN.)

Simple citation style edits: the power of CSL

Posted on by
1

I keep forgetting the kind of simple edits that are so trivial to make in CSL styles. Here I catalogue a few, for my own benefit and hopefully also useful to others. The occasion is a festive one —one paper in press and another accepted with minor revisions!— and I’m not going to let the fun be spoiled by the tedious job of making minute changes to the referencing styles. Where did the editors and reviewers find all this time anyway? One of them manually added spaces before the page numbers in all of my forty+ in-text references! I refuse to do that kind of monkey-work. Instead, I’m simply going to edit the nearest CSL style and woosh, the whole document will be fine.

The Zotero documentation offers the basic information on how to edit CSL styles and how to get your new style into Zotero; here I assume that you’ve read that. (The lowdown: use the reference test pane to see the XML code of an existing style. Make it your own. Save it under a different name. Drag it onto Firefox to add it to Zotero.) Before I give the code snippets, it is probably useful to briefly outline what a CSL style looks like so that the code looks less terrifying.

Basic anatomy of a CSL style

A CSL style is simply a file that you can edit in any text editor consisting of a number of different ‘blocks’ of information. The information is couched in terms of a relatively simple but powerful XML-based metalanguage called “Citation Style Language” or CSL for short. Every CSL style basically looks as follows. First, an info block providing the metadata for the style (author, name, url, type); then a lot of macros defining the building blocks; a citation block that determines what citations look like in your document; and finally a bibliography block.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<style xmlns="http://purl.org/net/xbiblio/csl" class="in-text" xml:lang="en">
  <info>
	here goes the metadata
  </info>
	here go all the macros
  <citation>
	this block defines what a citation looks like
  </citation>
  <bibliography>
	this block defines what the bibliography looks like
  </bibliography>
</style>

Initials vs. full first names

Some styles have initials, others have full first names. Some of the first have initials followed by a period, others without. Personally, I think it is not the best thing to abbreviate information that is crucial for disambiguation, but this is what does it:

initialize-with="."

The above form gives you “Gombrich, E.” Removing the period (i.e. having initialize-with="") gives you “Gombrich, E”. Removing the option as a whole gives you “Gombrich, Ernst”. Note that in some styles, this setting is included in several macros (e.g. editor as well as author) so you might have to adjust it in several places.

Multiple entries by the same author

Some well-known styles (for example the Chicago Manual of Style) substitute subsequent recurrences of an author with three em-dashes. The highlighted line below is what does it:

<bibliography>
      ...
    <option name="subsequent-author-substitute" value="———"/>
      ...
</bibliography>

If you don’t want that happening, simply remove this option from the bibliography block.

Issue numbers

Some editors don’t like issue numbers. In the Chicago style, the issue number comes out of the locators macro, and it is generated by the following line:

<text variable="issue" prefix=", no. "/>

Deleting that line gets rid of the issue number.

Page number prefix for in-text citations

For page numbers in in-text citations, some styles want (Doe 2010:5), others (Doe 2010, 5) and yet others (Doe 2010: 5) (note the space before the page number in the latter case). This is controlled by the group delimiter in the citation block towards the end of the CSL style.

<citation>
      ...
      (basic options)
      ...
    <layout prefix="(" suffix=")" delimiter="; ">
      <group delimiter=": ">
      ...
      (contributors, date, locators)
      ...
      </group>
    </layout>
  </citation>

delimiter=": " yields (Doe 2010: 5), while delimiter=", " yields (Doe 2010, 5), etc.

Want more?

Do you want more information, or need to make further customizations? The Zotero documentation has a page giving a CSL syntax summary. The common options given on that page are probably most useful to start with. Also, Rintze Zelle has written a very nice CSL 1.0 primer. And don't forget you can always ask for help in the Zotero forums. Loads of volunteer supporters there know more about CSL than I do.

Now live: SemiotiX New Series, a WordPress-based e-journal

Posted on by
1

Now online: SemiotiX New Series, an e-journal in semiotics. SemiotiX Bulletin has been around for several years, in hand-edited HTML. Its reincarnation, SemiotiX New Series, runs on WordPress, automating all of the technical stuff so that the editors can spend their time writing and editing contributions. Geek alert: the rest of this post details some of the technical stuff behind the scenes. Feel free to skip! Continue reading →

Subtitles in ELAN and beyond

Posted on by
Reply

ELAN is a tool for creating complex annotations on video and audio resources. It’s great for doing the hard work of annotation, but less ideal as a way of displaying the result, for example in a presentation. This brief tutorial covers a common use case: displaying a short stretch of video material with subtitles overlayed on the image. The instructions below are geared towards Windows users, although Mac users can also benefit from ELAN-exported .srt subtitles using VLC Media Player or Quicktime + Perian. Continue reading →

Unified Style Sheet for Linguistics Journals

Posted on by
Reply

Not all linguists may be aware of this, but since 2007 there has been a Unified Style Sheet for publications in our field, developed by the editors of a number of linguistic journals, including Language. (Oddly enough, just which journals besides Language joined in the effort remains unclear.) There is not much centralized information available about this style, but we have the 2007 specifications (PDF) and a page endorsing the style at the official LSA website.

As Stephen Anderson writes on the Linguist List,

Use of this style is encouraged, and if it is widely adopted, that could considerably facilitate the preparation of manuscripts. In support of that, it would be useful to have software support for it in popular document preparation systems.

I’m happy to report that Zotero now supports the unified style through the powerful open format CSL. If you have Zotero, you can simply install the style right away. Zotero of course already supported lots of other citation styles, including the widely used APA and MLA as well as styles for specific journals like Language (install) and the Journal of Pragmatics (install).

I haven’t been able to find a definitive list of the journals that have adapted the Unified Style Sheet for Linguistics, but some examples of journals using and/or endorsing it are Language itself, Semantics & Pragmatics, and the Journal of English Linguistics. Also, the LDLT conference series at SOAS, London is using it in its proceedings. Does anyone know of more journals?

Dashboard Post-it: leave notes on the WordPress dashboard

Posted on by
21

Dashboard Post-it is a simple plugin for WordPress 2.7 and higher that allows you to leave yourself or other authors a note on the dashboard. It is implemented as a configurable dashboard widget, so you can collapse it, move it around, and edit it as any other dashboard widget. It will accept plain text or (sanitized) HTML. Only users with the capability “Edit dashboard” can edit the note.

As of today, Dashboard Post-it is available for download at the WordPress plugin repository. Screenshots and installation instructions can be found over there.

I wrote the plugin for my own use. There are alternatives, but since some of them stopped working after the changes to the Dashboard in WP 2.7 and others are not widgetized, and since this is a much requested feature, I decided to submit the plugin to the repository.

Zotero 1.5 is here: synchronization and tons of other features

Posted on by
3

It’s here. Zotero 1.5 beta. The new version comes with built-in synchronization, exports to more than 1100 citation styles, and supports browsing your library online (see below). Zotero is now better than EndNote on all fronts. Here’s a quick overview of the most important features:

  • Synchronization. Automatically keep your library in sync across different PCs. If you have access to WebDAV storage, synching can also include your attachments.
  • Automatic backup. A copy of your library is stored safely on the synchronization server.
  • More than 1100 CSL citation styles. The style repository has grown immensely due to community efforts. Zotero styles are built on the powerful open source Citation Style Language (CSL), an XML dialect.
  • Support for EndNote styles. Thousands of EndNote .ens styles can now be used for citation formatting. These styles are available to licensed users of EndNote.
  • Rich text notes. Formatting can now be applied to notes with a WYSIWYG editor.
  • Automatic detection of PDF metadata. Another much requested feature. Not yet bulletproof because it depends on the information available in your PDF and the repository used to look it up, but a great step forward.
  • Shared collections. Easily share and build collections with colleagues.

All of this built on open source technologies and standards, which means that your data is not locked up in proprietary software at the mercy of profit driven companies.

New website features

zotero-library-470

Browse your Zotero library online [click for fullsize]

Meanwhile, the Zotero website has seen a major revamping, the most important new feature being the ability to browse your library online. Other features are more geared towards social networking activities: users now can have an online Zotero profile, can follow other Zotero users, and can build an online CV.

If you’re still stuck on EndNote, check out making the switch to Zotero, or see my review and comparison from last year. Questions? There are lots of helpful and friendly people hanging out in the Zotero forums. You can also post them below.

Phonology Assistant

Posted on by
Reply

Phonology Assistant (PA) is a free phonology tool by SIL that (as of version 3.0) works interactively with the data stored in Toolbox, Fieldworks Language Explorer, and Speech Analyzer. It automates many of the cumbersome and repetitive tasks associated with doing phonological analysis, and it does so in a most systematic and revealing way. The things it does more or less automatically include drawing up a phone inventory; computing relative frequencies of phones; computing syllable structures; generating phonotactic charts for every conceivable combination of positions, phones, or features; and finding minimal pairs along various dimensions. A powerful search function allows the user to search for phonetic patterns within specified environments.

A review of Phonology Assistant by me was published yesterday in Language Documentation & Conservation. It’s a tremendously useful tool — anyone who has ever been faced with the task of doing phonological analysis will know that it can grow enormously complex, especially if one wants to be comprehensive and look not just at simple positional distribution (initial, medial, final) but also at occurrence in different environments (intervocalic, before voiced fricatives, after a nasal consonant, etc.). PA assists in these household chores, and does it all with an interface so smooth you wouldn’t notice the conceptual complexity of the tasks. Check out the review (pdf) or the PA website.

  1. Dingemanse, Mark. 2008. Review of Phonology Assistant 3.0.1. Language Documentation & Conservation 2, no. 2: 325-331. doi:http://hdl.handle.net/10125/4350.