Manual

Creating and Editing Lexical Items

To create a new lexical item, select one or more themes from the theme list that you want the item to be linked to. If a relevant theme doesn't exist then select [All] or [Unassigned] so that no themes will be linked to the new item. Next, go to the Edit menu and select New Lexical Item or simply click the button underneath the lexical item list. Either action causes a new item to be created and displayed in the right side of the window.  You will automatically enter edit mode. Notice that the Edit button located at the bottom of the window is selected to reflect this.

Now, fill in the lexical item data as desired. There are numerous fields that can be filled in, but in most cases only 3 are required:

• Item text (i.e. the text you want to learn)
• Lexical type (typically defined as a noun, verb, adjective, etc)
• Translation (Definition for monolingual dictionaries)

Optional fields that are always present are:

• Active status (new items default to active)
• Pronunciation
• Themes (links to existing themes)
• Comments
• Personal Examples that show how to use the item text in context.
• Difficulty rating (shown by a gauge on the lower right)

Also, there are five buttons directly above the personal examples. Clicking any one of them will cause an additional text field to appear. These buttons are:

• Roots (contains text or unidirectional links)
• Synonyms (contains text or bidirectional links)
• Antonyms (contains text or bidirectional links)
• Phonetically similar items (contains text or bidirectional links)
• Related items (contains text or unidirectional links)

Each of these optional fields can contain text or links to other lexical items. See Linking lexical items for more information on how these fields work. A sixth button is shown just to the left of the item text. It shows an image and is used to attach audio to the lexical item. For more information on attaching audio see Attaching Audio.

Lastly, there are some fields that will be shown only if your lexicon is configured to have them.

• [Alternate] Definition (shown for all items when active)
• Gender (only for lexical types that defined them, sometimes required)
• Lexical Class (only for lexical types that defined them, sometimes required)
• Conjugations (only for lexical types that defined them)

Once you've finished defining the lexical item then clicking the Edit button again will exit edit mode. Alternatively, you may begin editing a different item by selecting it in the lexical item list. Either action will cause the program to save the edited item as long as a similar item doesn't already exist. A similar item is one that has the same item text and is assigned the same lexical type. If such an item is found then you will not be allowed to continue until you change the item text or lexical type or you decide to delete the new item altogether.