11. Fieldwork Language Explorer (FLEx)
This workshop will provide participants with basic knowledge and experience in archival
work for language reclamation and revitalization through the use of the FLEx program.
Fieldwork Language Explorer (FLEx) is a lexical database program that can be used to
collect and analyze text data from your community in order to facilitate dictionary
making. It is provided free by SIL.
Day 1 -- What FLEx is and isn’t and how to create, open and back up a project and how
to work collaboratively on a project.
Day 2 -- Using more than one writing system to represent your language. (For example,
both a traditional orthography and a modern orthography.) Adding lexical entries with
sound and picture. Adjusting part of speech information to be appropriate for your
language.
Day 3 -- Components, complex forms, and variants. Working with texts as a way to add
lexical entries to the dictionary and to provide example sentences. Glossing texts with
practical glosses and with morphological glosses
Day 4 -- Creating a dictionary by exporting lexical entries (word lists, Webonary, etc.),
format dictionary outputs. Exporting texts
Participants in this workshop will acquire an understanding of how to create a basic
dictionary in FLEx, including how to add lexical entries, as well as associated photos
and sounds. We will also explore how to use FLEx to work with textual material.
Participants will also be provided with support materials for the FLEx program in order
to continue working on their own database after CoLang.
Required materials: laptop (Windows or Linux preferred, for Mac, a virtual
machine is required to run FLEx) with FLEx 9.0 installed (see relevant information here
for the files to download on the SIL website)
Facilitators