Creates a new layer.

This function creates a new annotation layer. The layer may be configured with a layer manager ID and task parameters, for automatic annotation. If so, this function will create the layer and the automation task, but automatic annotation will not be run by this function. To generate the automatic annotations, use generateLayer.

newLayer(
  labbcat.url,
  layer.id,
  description,
  type = "string",
  alignment = 0,
  category = "General",
  parent.id = "word",
  annotator.id = NULL,
  annotator.task.parameters = NULL
)

Arguments

labbcat.url

URL to the LaBB-CAT instance

layer.id

The ID of the layer to create, which must be unique to the LaBB-CAT instance.

description

A description of the annotations the layer will contain.

type

The type of data the labels will represent. Valid values are "string", "number", "ipa" (for phoneme representations), or "boolean" (labels "0" or "1").

alignment

How annotations on the layer will relate to time alignment; valid values are 0 (no alignment; annototations are just tags on the parent annotation), 1 (instants; annotations mark a single point in time), or 2 (intervals; annotations have a start and end time).

category

The project/category the layer belongs to.

parent.id

The parent layer; valid values are "word" (for word layers), "segment" (for segment layers) "turn" (for phrase layers), or "transcript" (for span layers).

annotator.id

The ID of the layer manager that automatically fills in annotations on the layer, if any

annotator.task.parameters

The configuration the layer manager should use when filling the layer with annotations. This is a string whose format is specific to each layer manager.

Value

The resulting layer definition, with members:

  • id The layer's unique ID

  • parentId The layer's parent layer ID

  • description The description of the layer

  • alignment The layer's alignment - 0 for none, 1 for point alignment, 2 for interval alignment

  • peers Whether children have peers or not

  • peersOverlap Whether child peers can overlap or not

  • parentIncludes Whether the parent t-includes the child

  • saturated Whether children must temporally fill the entire parent duration (true) or not (false)

  • parentIncludes Whether the parent t-includes the child

  • type The type for labels on this layer

  • validLabels List of valid label values for this layer

Details

You must have administration privileges in LaBB-CAT in order to be able to use this function.

Examples

if (FALSE) {
## Upload the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary 
loadLexicon(labbcat.url, "cmudict", " - ", "", ";", "Word - Pron", FALSE, "cmudict.txt")

## Create a layer that tags each token with its CMU Pronouncing Dictionary pronunciation
newLayer(labbcat.url, "pronunciation", "CMU Dict pronunciations encoded in ARPAbet",
         annotator.id="FlatFileDictionary",
         annotator.task.parameters=
             "tokenLayerId=orthography&tagLayerId=phonemes&dictionary=cmudict:Word->Pron")

## Generate the pronunciation tags
generateLayer(labbcat.url, "pronunciation")
}