MultiCon | CLARIN-NL

MultiCon: Multilayer Concordance Functions in ELAN and ANNEX

Summary

Enhancement of the multimedia annotation tool ELAN and the accompanying ANNEX browser to create an appropriate multilayer visualization of multilayer collocates, that significantly expands the search options. This led to ELAN release 4.6.0 (spring 2013).

Background

ELAN, the CLARIN standard tool for multimedia annotation developed at the MPI for Psycholinguistics, contains several search functions. The most complex one (‘Structured Search in Multiple Files’) is also available in TROVA, the search engine that can be used to query ELAN-files in the online corpora and displayed in the ANNEX browser tool. Overlapping patterns on multiple layers can be searched for, and these searches can already be specified for many temporal properties both within and between layers (called ‘tiers’ in ELAN). The list of search hits shows the results corresponding to the specified fields in the query listed in sequence, without an indication of the precise temporal relation. As the online browser tool ANNEX currently does not allow for the generation or modification of annotation files, researchers primarily use the stand-alone tool ELAN. MultiCon significantly enhances searching and visualisation in the online browser tool ANNEX and ELAN.

Contacts