Observation Annotation

Observation annotation is used to make an observation pertaining to one or more word tokens. Observations offer a an external qualification on part of a text. The qualification is expressed by the class, in turn defined by a set. The precise semantics of the observation depends on the user-defined set.

Specification

Annotation Category:
 

Span Annotation
Declaration:

<observation-annotation set="..."> (note: set is optional for this annotation type; if you declare this annotation type to be setless you can not assign classes)
Version History:
 

since v1.3
Element:

<observation>
API Class:

Observation (FoLiApy API Reference)
Layer Element:

<observations>
Span Role Elements:
 
Required Attributes:
 
Optional Attributes:
 
  • xml:id – The ID of the element; this has to be a unique in the entire document or collection of documents (corpus). All identifiers in FoLiA are of the XML NCName datatype, which roughly means it is a unique string that has to start with a letter (not a number or symbol), may contain numbers, but may never contain colons or spaces. FoLiA does not define any naming convention for IDs.
  • set – The set of the element, ideally a URI linking to a set definition (see Set Definitions (Vocabulary)) or otherwise a uniquely identifying string. The set must be referred to also in the Annotation Declarations for this annotation type.
  • class – The class of the annotation, i.e. the annotation tag in the vocabulary defined by set.
  • processor – This refers to the ID of a processor in the Provenance Data. The processor in turn defines exactly who or what was the annotator of the annotation.
  • annotator – This is an older alternative to the processor attribute, without support for full provenance. The annotator attribute simply refers to the name o ID of the system or human annotator that made the annotation.
  • annotatortype – This is an older alternative to the processor attribute, without support for full provenance. It is used together with annotator and specific the type of the annotator, either manual for human annotators or auto for automated systems.
  • confidence – A floating point value between zero and one; expresses the confidence the annotator places in his annotation.
  • datetime – The date and time when this annotation was recorded, the format is YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss (note the literal T in the middle to separate date from time), as per the XSD Datetime data type.
  • n – A number in a sequence, corresponding to a number in the original document, for example chapter numbers, section numbers, list item numbers. This this not have to be an actual number but other sequence identifiers are also possible (think alphanumeric characters or roman numerals).
  • textclass – Refers to the text class this annotation is based on. This is an advanced attribute, if not specified, it defaults to current. See Text class attribute (advanced).
  • src – Points to a file or full URL of a sound or video file. This attribute is inheritable.
  • begintime – A timestamp in HH:MM:SS.MMM format, indicating the begin time of the speech. If a sound clip is specified (src); the timestamp refers to a location in the soundclip.
  • endtime – A timestamp in HH:MM:SS.MMM format, indicating the end time of the speech. If a sound clip is specified (src); the timestamp refers to a location in the soundclip.
  • speaker – A string identifying the speaker. This attribute is inheritable. Multiple speakers are not allowed, simply do not specify a speaker on a certain level if you are unable to link the speech to a specific (single) speaker.
  • tag – Contains a space separated list of processing tags associated with the element. A processing tag carries arbitrary user-defined information that may aid in processing a document. It may carry cues on how a specific tool should treat a specific element. The tag vocabulary is specific to the tool that processes the document. Tags carry no instrinsic meaning for the data representation and should not be used except to inform/aid processors in their task. Processors are encouraged to clean up the tags they use. Ideally, published FoLiA documents at the end of a processing pipeline carry no further tags. For encoding actual data, use class and optionally features instead.
Accepted Data:

<comment> (Comment Annotation), <desc> (Description Annotation), <metric> (Metric Annotation), <relation> (Relation Annotation)
Valid Context:

<observations> (Observation Annotation)

Explanation

Note

Please first ensure you are familiar with the general principles of Span Annotation to make sense of this annotation type.

The <observation> element is a span annotation element that makes an observation pertaining to one or more word tokens. It is embedded in an observations layer.

Observations offer a an external qualification on part of a text. The qualification is expressed by the class, in turn defined by a set. The precise semantics of the observation depends on the user-defined set.

The element may for example act to mark errors in the text or to capture observations from teachers/proofreaders.

Example

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<FoLiA xmlns="http://ilk.uvt.nl/folia" version="2.0" xml:id="example">
  <metadata>
      <annotations>
          <token-annotation set="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LanguageMachines/uctodata/master/setdefinitions/tokconfig-eng.foliaset.ttl">
			 <annotator processor="p1" />
		  </token-annotation>
          <text-annotation>
			 <annotator processor="p1" />
          </text-annotation>
          <sentence-annotation>
			 <annotator processor="p1" />
          </sentence-annotation>
          <paragraph-annotation>
			 <annotator processor="p1" />
          </paragraph-annotation>
          <observation-annotation set="errordetection"> <!-- an ad-hoc set -->
			 <annotator processor="p2" />
		  </observation-annotation>
      </annotations>
      <provenance>
         <processor xml:id="p1" name="student" type="manual" />
         <processor xml:id="p2" name="teacher" type="manual" />
      </provenance>
  </metadata>
  <text xml:id="example.text">
    <p xml:id="example.p.1">
        <s xml:id="example.p.1.s.1">
         <t>The Dalai Lama greated him.</t>
         <w xml:id="example.p.1.s.1.w.1"><t>The</t></w>
         <w xml:id="example.p.1.s.1.w.2"><t>Dalai</t></w>
         <w xml:id="example.p.1.s.1.w.3"><t>Lama</t></w>
         <w xml:id="example.p.1.s.1.w.4"><t>greated</t></w>
         <w xml:id="example.p.1.s.1.w.5" space="no"><t>him</t></w>
         <w xml:id="example.p.1.s.1.w.6"><t>.</t></w>
         <observations>
          <observation class="typo">
           <wref id="example.p.1.s.1.w.4"/>
          </observation>
         </observations>
        </s>
    </p>
  </text>
</FoLiA>