Guide to Using the Excel Versions of the Weslalex Word Lists

Filtering Data

Perhaps the most familiar approach is to use Ctrl f (viz., Home > Find & Select > Find). This tool will find and highlight the value you are looking for. For example, to find words that have subpos value “indef” (indefinite), one would select the subpos column, do Ctrl f, type “indef” in Find what, and click Find All. You will get a scrollable list of addresses that have that value; clicking on an address will take you to that datum and highlight it. Be aware that this process can take a surprisingly long time.

Another approach is to use table filters. These are fast and convenient for many kinds of word searches. Ctrl Shift L (viz., Data > Filter, the funnel icon) turns on or off the ability to filter data. When filtering is enabled, all the column heads (the ones with the names, not the ones with the Excel column designators like AA) have a pulldown menu handle. The menu provides several ways of searching the data. In all cases, when you search the data, rows that do not match your search criteria become invisible. You see only the rows the match the criteria. Of course they are still there, behind the scenes, and all rows keep their original row numbers.

For example, to find interjections, you can search for wordforms that have interj in the pos field. Go to the top of the table, pull down the menu for pos, and you will see two different ways to search for interj. In this case, since there are only a dozen or so different values in this column, the easiest approach is to look at the list of values and make sure that only the box with interj is checked. Note that all values are probably checked. You could manually uncheck every value except the desired interj. Or, you could uncheck the (Select All) box, which means deselect all, then check the interj: 2 clicks instead of 10. Click OK, then notice that the table is quite a bit shorter, because you will see only the words that the tagger decided were interjections.

Note that the label for the pos field now has a funnel icon to show that the table is filtered by this column; if you hover the mouse over this, a tooltip will tell you that it is filtering for “interj”. Note also that the row numbers are unchanged. Finally, you will notice that all the summary statistics after the table have been updated, to reflect only the visible rows. However, you should be aware that if you write your own Excel formulas to search or otherwise manipulate the table, they will typically look at all the data, not just the visible data. Be sure you understand the rules.

You may filter by multiple fields simultaneously. For example, to find only the CVC interjections, keep the previous filter in force, and use the drop down menu on the cv field to select .

On text fields, such as those containing spellings and pronunciations, the filter options let you do fairly sophisticated things such as searching for cells that begin with certain values (good, e.g., for finding prefixes) or end with certain values (e.g., suffixes), or contain certain values. For example, to find wordforms where spells /c/, one can filter by the align field, “Text filter contains t=c” The text searches are case-insensitive, e.g., “a” is treated the same as “A”. In Weslalex, this is seldom a problem, but be on guard against certain situations where case is important, most notably the lemma and morpho fields.

On numeric fields, such as the frequency counts, you will find several useful options, such as the ability to search for numbers above or below a certain value, or above or below the mean.

There is a special menu option for clearing a filter, i.e., making it stop hiding columns. A quicker way to turn off filtering is to type Ctrl Shift L (or click the big Data funnel icon).

Of course, Excel provides many other ways to sort, search, and otherwise process data. Rather than add hundreds of pages to this short guide, I refer the reader to Excel’s fine documentation.

Table 1. Characters Arranged by Unicode Order

Basic Latin

Latin-1 Supplement

Latin Extended-A

IPA Extensions

!

U+0021

U+00C1

U+0105

U+0255

U+0022

U+00C9

ɟ

U+025F

U+0027

U+00CD

U+010C

U+0261

U+0028

U+00D3

ɨ

U+0268

U+0029

U+00D4

U+010E

U+0272

U+002A

U+00DA

U+010F

U+0283

U+002B

U+00DD

U+0119

U+028E

U+002C

U+00E1

U+011B

U+0291

U+002D

U+00E4

U+0139

U+0292

U+002E

U+00E9

U+013A

/

U+002F

U+00ED

U+013D

U+02D0

U+0030

U+00F3

U+013E

–

–

U+00F4

U+0141

U+031D

U+0039

U+00F5

U+0142

U+0329

U+003A

U+00F6

U+0144

U+0361

U+003B

U+00FA

U+0147

U+003C

U+00FC

U+0148

U+1EBD

U+003D

U+00FD

U+014B

U+003E

U+0155

U+003F

U+0158

U+0041

U+0159

–

Ś

Z

U+005A

U+015B

U+005B

U+0160

U+005D

U+0161

U+005E

U+0164

U+005F

U+0165

U+0060

U+016E

U+0061

U+016F

–

ź

z

U+007A

U+017B

U+007C

U+017C

U+017D

U+017E