The NITE XML Toolkit: Flexible annotation for multimodal language data

Abstract

Multimodal corpora that show humans interacting via language are now relatively easy to collect. Current tools allow one either to apply sets of time-stamped codes to the data and consider their timing and sequencing or to describe some specific linguistic structure that is present in the data, built over the top of some form of transcription. To further our understanding of human communication, the research community needs code sets with both timings and structure, designed flexibly to address the research questions at hand. The NITE XML Toolkit offers library support that software developers can call upon when writing tools for such code sets and, thus, enables richer analyses than have previously been possible. It includes data handling, a query language containing both structural and temporal constructs, components that can be used to build graphical interfaces, sample programs that demonstrate how to use the libraries, a tool for running queries, and an experimental engine that builds interfaces on the basis of declarative specifications.