FAQ (coders)
Can I change coding once submitted?
Yes. You can send in several coding sheets for the same language.
How long does it take to fill in the questionnaire for one language?
Two student assistants at the MA level coding over a year took approximately 10 hours per language. However, they had access to language experts for many languages and used the better end of the spectrum of grammars. A more realistic estimation of coding more generally is between 10-18 hours. Getting used to the questionnaire is the most important factor. Coding will be much slower than this in the beginning. This is ok. It is more important to understand the questionnaire thoroughly than to finish coding within a short amount of time.
If a feature is taking you longer than 20 minutes to code once you've found the relevant sections in the description, write it down, raise it at your next node meeting and move on in the meantime.
I do not understand this feature/I'm having trouble applying it to a specific language.
As you are coding, you will undoubtedly encounter an issue that is difficult to resolve. This wiki was created to resolve most of the issues encountered by coders. If you struggle with a particular feature, consult the wiki page for that feature. If the wiki page does not resolve your issue, please contact your node leader or the patron of the feature. The patron of the feature is mentioned at the bottom of each feature article. You can contact the patrons by posting an issue on the issues page of the GitHub repository. If you feel uncomfortable asking your question in public, you can always contact the patrons or node leaders via e-mail. The node leaders, Hedvig and Jakob are happy to take any kind of question and can help direct you to the right person if they do not know the answer to your question.
What should I think about when asking questions?
There are a couple of things to keep in mind when posting issues and asking questions:
- there are no stupid questions.
There are many coders and many are new. Grambank coding is not easy. It is normal if you do not understand everything. Remember that you are not alone and that your question will help other coders as well. That said, we encourage reading the feature documentation and talking to others in your local group so that conversations on GitHub can be as efficient and informative as possible.
- Provide context to your issue.
When posting an issue to the group, make sure to state enough context so that others can help out efficiently. Type out the feature number and question in full and describe the language-specific situation with examples, if possible.
If your issue is a question for clarification of a feature, tell us if there are any particular terms you do not understand. Ask for general clarification or for examples.
More is more.
- Post one issue thread per issue.
Issue threads discussing several different issues at once can become confusing. You can address more than one feature in one issue, as long as they are related (e.g. they are about the same language, or they are on the same topic).
- Consistency
It is important that we are consistent, and this is a very hard task. Therefore, please keep in mind that our comparative concepts need to be pragmatically executable, compatible with previous coding and interesting rather than theoretically perfect.
- If not solved
If the issue is not solved in an issue, it may be discussed at the next meeting. The final coding could still be a ?, for example if it is not clear what the best interpretation of a language specific situation is for Grambank.
What do I do if the descriptions available do not mention a phenomenon at all?
It is fairly common that nothing is mentioned about a given feature in the grammatical description. This could mean either that
- The language does not have the relevant marker or construction. That is, the value should be 0.
- The language may or may not have the relevant marker or construction. The description is not complete enough and does not cover it. That is, the value should be ?.
There is a wiki article dedicated to this issue here.
I'm frustrated, I cannot understand what is really going on in this language!
Leave it, at least for now. Move on to other features and regain some energy and motivation. You will not be able to fill out ever datapoint for every language. If it takes you more than 20 minutes to investigate how to code a single datapoint, it may be better to leave the question for later.