Consistency

Consistency. At its core, FieldWorks not only stores your data, but maintains consistency by keeping each piece of data in just one place. If you decide to change a link or a spelling, the change appears everywhere that item is referenced.

Writing systems

Got multiple scripts? FieldWorks is designed to let you type and display multiple writing systems, even complex ones, in all the places you need them.

Structure and Visibility

You can choose to show only the data fields you need for the moment, and then reveal more when you are ready. Either way, your data is orderly and accessible. FieldWorks data is stored as an XML file in the SIL Language and Culture Model (LCM) XML schema, which is publicly documented. It can also be read or manipulated by external tools like FLExTools.

Start to Finish

FieldWorks supports tasks from initial entry of collected data through publication.

If you haven’t already, you can begin with this Quick Video Tour of FieldWorks showing the five main areas of the program as they work together.

Lexicon

The Lexicon area keeps details about the building blocks of words in your language.

• Creating a New Entry
• Lexicon Edit
• Lexical Relations
• Import and Export
• Semantic Domains
• Dictionaries
• Bulk Edit

Grammar

The Grammar area uses Texts you enter along with information from the Lexicon area, to compose a grammatical description of your language. As you understand more and refine your data, it shows up in the Grammar Sketch.

• Grammar Categories
• Grammar Sketch

Texts & Words

As you add text and analyze it, FieldWorks adds morphemes to the Lexicon area and adds fully inflected groups of morphemes to the list of word forms. Here, you can analyze words to identify and gloss each meaningful part. Three different concordance views show the occurrences of a word in your text corpus.

• Interlinear Texts
• Concordance

Lists

In the Lists area, the user can localise and customise the categories and labels used in various parts of FieldWorks. The SIL Language and Culture Model (LCM) underlying FieldWorks is a robust model for storing and interacting with language and culture data, but the user can also add custom fields and list items as needed to describe and work with their data.

• Lists

Notebook

Because human language and culture are so closely intertwined, the Notebook area is designed for Anthropological notes and original transcriptions of text material, so the researcher can include almost any kind of contextual background that is needed to make a thorough record of the places, people, and occasions that give meaning to a language sample.

• Notebook

For an orientation to FieldWorks, visit our library of demo movies. These provide a video tutorial on how to create your dictionary while showing key features of the tool.