Annotation

The annotation process starts by selecting a sentence which is to be annotated from the displayed text. This operation is performed in the standard way, by dragging the mouse while pressing the left button, over the sentence (text) which must be selected. Once a fragment of text (sentence) is selected, the command Annotate from menu Annotate and the button   from the tool bar are enabled. When pressing this button or when choosing command Annotate from menu Annotate a dialog box will be activated. In this dialog box, within an editing field, is contained the text which has been selected. The user may edit the text here. Although the user can completely delete the text occurring in the editing field and can punch in a new one, this is not the reason for which this dialog box has been created. The reason for providing it is to allow the user to make non-significant changes within the sentence to be annotated. For instance, punctuation marks can be eliminated or separated from words if their annotation is also required, etc. Once the desired modifications are all performed, the annotation process itself can start when clicking on button Annotate. The selected (and maybe modified text) will be displayed within a new window where all annotation operations will be performed.

In order to establish the part of speech of a word, perform a right click on that specific word. The word will be marked by red coloring and underneath it a contextual menu will be activated. This contextual menu contains the parts of speech list, (that established by the user see Configuration).

Select (click on) the desired part of speech and it will immediately occur underneath the word corresponding to which this action has been performed.

If the modification or deletion of a part of speech already associated to a word is required, performing a right click on that word or on its associated part of speech will again open the contextual menu containing the parts of speech list. When selecting a new part of speech it will immediately occur by replacing the previous one. If, within the contextual menu, click on the Delete Part of Speech button is performed, the part of speech corresponding to the word will be deleted and no part of speech will be associated to this word any longer.

In order to create a dependency relation between two words, one first performs click (left button) on the dependent word (the one which determines and from where the arch starts). This word will be marked by blue coloring.

Next, click on the head word (the determined one, the one where the arch arrives) will be performed. An arch from the dependent word to the head word will instantly be created. This arch will be labeled with the sequence "?????", which indicates the fact that the type of the newly created dependency relation has not yet been established.

In order to establish the type of a dependency relation one must perform a right click on the sequence "?????" which occurs on top of the arch representing the relation. A contextual menu from where the type (established by the user, see Configuration) of the dependency relation can be chosen will open.

When selecting the relation type from the list (just like when establishing the part of speech), this type will immediately occur on top of the arch representing that relation. 

Again just like in the case of the parts of speech, when the modification of the type of a dependency relation is required, one must perform a right click on that relation type and the contextual menu containing the types of relations list will be activated. By selecting a different type of relation, the new type will immediately replace the former one. When clicking on button Delete Relation of this contextual menu, the entire dependency relation (namely the corresponding arch) will be deleted.

According to the dependency grammar formalism, each word of a sentence must depend on (should determine) another. The unique exception is represented by just one word, considered a main word, the head of the entire sentence (usually the main verb), which depends on no other word. This fact is graphically indicated by means of an arch like the one attached to verb has in the following figure.

Specifying the fact that a word is the head of a sentence is achieved as follows: click on that word is performed and the word is marked by blue coloring; a second click on the word will have as consequence indicating it as the head of the sentence, by means of an arch, as in the above figure. Establishing the type corresponding to this new arch is performed like in the case of all other relation types. Beware! When marking a word as representing the head of a sentence do not perform a double click on it. Perform a single click, wait for it to be marked by blue coloring and only then perform a second click. Since a sentence has a unique head word, DGA allows defining only one such word. Once a head word corresponding to a certain sentence has been established, the sequence of actions by means of which a head word is defined will have no effect whatsoever when performed within that same sentence.

The actions concerning establishing the part of speech of a word, creating a dependency relation and establishing the type of such a relation can be repeated in any order chosen by the user, and until the user considers the sentence to be properly and completely annotated. At that moment, by clicking on the OK button, the process of annotating a specific sentence ends. Obviously, one can cancel the annotation process at any moment by clicking on Cancel. If one clicks on OK and annotation of the sentence is not complete (in the sense that words to which parts of speech have not been assigned still exist or that each word does not depend on another one and not all dependency relation types are known), then the user is notified but still has the opportunity to save the incompletely annotated sentence.

Remark: Each time when a right click was mentioned, one referred to the operation of obtaining a contextual menu. This is the case for Windows and Unix (X Windows), but can differ in the case of other platforms (MacOS, for instance).

>Dependency Grammar Annotator