Understand spoken language

Creating a relation between words or phrases

Submitted by admin on 16 December 2014

Introduction

It is possible to create relations between words or phrases. These relations can be one of the following types:

  • see also
  • homonym (=alternative meanings)

The "see also" link is used for when there is some reason why the user might be interested to see a related word or phrase. For example, on the page for "white (feminine)" there is a "see also" to "white (masculine)". The words are spelt differently, they sound different, but it is clearly of interest for the person looking at one to be given a reference to the other.

Homonyms

The homonym link is used for words or phrases which are exactly the same pronunciation in the target language (i.e. French). (Technically these are homophones, not homonyms, sorry!). To the students, these links are marked as "Pronounced the same".

For example, "a (masculine)" is a homonym of "1 (one)". They are exactly the same word in French, with the same spelling and the same pronunciation, but in English they are translated by two totally different words ("a" and "1").

We only ever have a homonymn link or a "see also" link, never both on the same word. A homonym link takes precedence over a "see also" link. So, if a word has a homonym link, then we don't also need a "see also" link.

Example of homonymn links where only the pronunciation is the same:

Note that all words or phrases which sound identical (e.g. quelle, quel, quelles, but also indentically-sounding variants of adjectives, e.g. rouge, rouges, and even identically sounding phrases, e.g. la datte, la date) must be linked together as homonyms.  This is essential. If not, when someone is doing a quiz, they will hear a word or phrase played (e.g. one of quelle/quel/quelles), and may be presented with buttons with identical sounding answers such as "quelle", "quel" and "quelles" and so the quiz becomes impossible! When words or phrases which sound identical are linked together as homonyms, the system automatically avoids asking impossible-to-answer questions.

Note that for homonyms, only a link to the other word is shown, rather than the full recording, since the recording would be identical.

Note that a relation may be between more than 2 words, e.g. the French for "I say" now links via a "see also" relation to all the other present tense forms, such as "you say" and "he says" etc.

Note too that a relation is automatically created in both directions. For example, if you have a link from "a (masculine)" to "1 (one)", you will automatically have a link from "1 (one)" to "a (masculine)".

When 3 or more words have to be linked together by a relation, there should be only 1 relation (e.g. a relation quelle <--> quel <--> quelles) and not multiple relations (i.e. not quelle <--> quel, and quelle <--> quelles etc.).

This page explains how to create these relations.

Relation not displaying?

Note that relations will not display correctly until the pages at each end of the relation are published.

Creating Relations

When creating or editing a word, at the very bottom of the page you will find the Entity Collector. This enables you to create relations between words.

Entity Collector

In the "Select an entity" dropdown, you should be very careful to select the row marked "thai_word" rather than the one labelled "file" (yes, I know it's French and not Thai, but this is a historical thing). Be careful too if you are doing a phrase like "this is a cat" since there will likely be the "thai_word" for "this", "is", "a" and "cat" as well as the one you want, which would be "this is a cat".

Entity selection

When you have selected the relation type (e.g. "see also") and the entity (e.g. "thai_word: you say"), then you can click on the "Pick" button.

This adds the selected words to the list of picked entities (i.e. words picked for the relation).

You will need to go and edit each word which you want to add to the relation, and for each word select the correct "thai_word" entry and select "Pick".

When all the words which you want to be related to each other are in the list of picked entities, then, and only then click on "Save relation". It is much trickier to add, say, a third word to an existing relation than to put all the required words in the relation to begin with, so try and make sure that all the words you want in a single relation are in the Picked Entities list before you click on "Save relation". 

Entity Collector loaded

Relations between 3 or more words

Special care should be taken when creating relations between 3 or more words. These need to be done as one single relation. For example, the relation between the 3 different forms of the adjective for old is just one relation which links all 3 words. This makes sure that each word links to every other word.

In order to learn how to do this correctly, please read the following page, "Advanced relations".