Can I merge two lexicons?

ELAN
1

Hi,

I created a lexicon service and then imported a lexicon for the same language from an old .db file. Is there a way I can merge these two lexicons in ELAN? Or can I export them and merge them some other way and re-import as a single lexicon? Unfortunately I only have access to mac at the moment, so no Toolbox or FLEx access.

Thanks
Annie Cameron

2

Hi,

ELAN doesn’t have a lexicon merging facility (yet), but it might be possible to merge two lexicons by copying, e.g. in an XML editor, the XML of the entries of one lexicon and pasting them in the XML file of the other lexicon. If I understand the situation correctly, there shouldn’t be a problem with duplicate id’s of entries in the two lexicons.
If this works and the lexicon can be opened and used in ELAN, the entries can be sorted in ELAN and stored in that order.
The lexicon XML files are stored by ELAN in the folder “LexanLexicons” in ELAN’s data folder.

-Han

3

Hi Han,

thank you for that information. I am unable to locate the data folder. I am on Mac OS 10.15.7. Do you have any idea how I may be able to locate it, I have tried spotlight search and looking through the library folders.

Kind Regards,

Annie

4

Hi Annie,

I just checked on a 10.15.7 system and the information on the mentioned manual page still seems to be correct. With the Finder active and the Go menu opened (pulled down) and then pressing the Alt/Option key, the Library menu item should appear in the pull down menu. If that is also the case on your system, select that Library folder and go into Preferences->ELAN etc.

Best,
Han

5

Hi, I am having a similar situation in which I would like to work on a lexicon together with my research assistant, but we seem not to be able to share our lexicons.

We created two lexicons directly into ELAN, exported them in LIFT, and shared them with each other. I thought that I could merge the lexicons by coping one into the other in my XML editor but upon inspection it seems to me that the properties of the two files are different.

This is the header of my file:

lexicon xmlns:xsi=“http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance” schemaVersion=“1.0” producer=“ELAN Lexicon Component” xsi:schemaLocation=“http://www.mpi.nl/tools/elan/LexiconComponent-1.0.xsd”

and these are the categories in my file:

<entry id> 
    <lexical-unit>-di</lexical-unit>
    <morph-type>suffix</morph-type>
    <variant>-d</variant>
    <sense id="s_0112b630-bf77-4af1-b3c9-eac9d35200ce" order="1">
        <grammatical-category>verb</grammatical-category>
        <gloss>3</gloss>
    </sense>
</entry>

While she produces a file with the header:

lift producer=“ELAN-Lexicon to LIFT Transformer” version=“0.13”

and the categories:

<lexical-unit>
     <form lang= >
            <text> özi</text>
     </form>
</lexical-unit>
<trait name="morph-type" value="free morph"/>
<sense id="cb7707af-10d9-4731-b703-ce60ac4b2c3d" order="1">
<grammatical-info value="reflexive pronoun"/>
<gloss>
      <text>REFL.3</text>
</gloss>

I am not entirely sure it is relevant but I use Linux and occasionally Windows, while she is using a macOS.

I figure that in the worst case scenario we could work directly on the XML, but I wanted to first check that I did not do any very basic mistake.
(I should add that I have tried copying her file into the ELAN data folder and modifying it from there directly but it did not seem to change anything)

Best,
Giorgia

6

Hi Giorgia,

The first snippet is ELAN’s XML format, this is also used when you do a “Save As” from the Lexicon menu.
The second snippet is in the LIFT XML format, this is what you get if you choose “Export Lexicon” from the Lexicon menu. If you want to merge you need the two files in the same format, either the ELAN XML or the LIFT XML. The choice depends on the plans for the merged lexicon: if it is to be used in FLEx, LIFT might be the best choice (although first merging the ELAN XML files and then exporting to LIFT might work equally well), otherwise merging the ELAN XML files is probably best.

-Han