• <!DOCTYPE teiCorpus.2 SYSTEM 'tei2.dtd' [ ]> is the DOCTYPE declaration in which

-- teiCorpus.2 names the root element of the document to which the DTD applies. This is the name defined by the TEI as the root element name for language corpora (Guidelines 23).

 -- SYSTEM tei2.dtd says that the required DTD definitions are available locally via the file tei2.dtd. To understand the role of this file, one has to realize that the TEI DTD is partitioned into fragments that can be selected according to the requirements of particular applications, thus obviating the need to include the entire DTD in situations where its full range is not required; tei2.dtd is a 'driver' file (Guidelines 3.2) 'which refers to a number of other DTD files, the exact set of other files referred to depending on which base and which additional tagsets are in use' (Guidelines 3.6). For more information on this selection mechanism see  Guidelines 2.8.2 and Guidelines 3.

-- the square brackets [ ] enclose the NECTE-specific selections from the TEI DTD and some NECTE-specific NOTATION and ENTITY declarations. These are described in what follows.

• The ENTITY declarations from <!ENTITY % TEI.XML 'INCLUDE> to <!ENTITY % TEI.corpus 'INCLUDE'> select the parts of the full TEI DTD provided by TEI that are relevant to NECTE, and also specify a single NECTE-specific modification to the DTD.

-- <!ENTITY % TEI.XML 'INCLUDE'> is the core tag set that every TEI-conformant document must have access to (Guidelines 6).

-- <!ENTITY % TEI.extensions.ent SYSTEM 'necte_extensions.ent' > is the NECTE-specific modification to the TEI DTD. The NECTE corpus includes audio files that must be embedded into its TEI-conformant encoding. The Guidelines do not, however, provide any obvious way of doing this, and so the mechanism for embedding graphics (Guidelines 22.3) was adapted by renaming the <figure> tag as <audio>. The procedure for this modification is given in Guidelines 29; necte_extensions.ent is the name of the file containing the required declaration.

-- <!ENTITY % TEI.mixed 'INCLUDE'> TEI regards corpora as ‘mixed’ documents that transcend conceptually unitary types like prose, and that consequently require tags from a selection of DTD fragments. This declaration specifies the mixed base fragment, which requires that all DTD fragments that are to constitute the mix be specified; these are given below.

-- <!ENTITY % TEI.spoken 'INCLUDE'> defines tags appropriate to transcriptions of spoken language (Guidelines 11).

-- <!ENTITY % TEI.linking 'INCLUDE'> defines tags for linking and aligning documents (Guidelines 14).

-- <!ENTITY % TEI.analysis 'INCLUDE'> defines 'a tag set for associating simple analyses and interpretations with text elements', including grammatical markup (Guidelines 15).

-- <!ENTITY % TEI.figures 'INCLUDE'> defines a tag set for referring to graphics declared as external entities (Guidelines 22); this is required for the <audio> tag mentioned above.

-- <!ENTITY % TEI.corpus 'INCLUDE'> defines corpus-specific tags (Guidelines 23).

• <!NOTATION wav SYSTEM "wmplayer.exe"> Non-text entities such as graphics and sound can be embedded in XML documents, but instructions on how these are to be dealt with must be provided for XML processors. This is done using NOTATION declarations (Guidelines 2.7.4; Guidelines 22.3). In the NECTE document, audio is required: <!NOTATION wav SYSTEM "wmplayer.exe"> says that any audio files are in '.wav' format and are played using the Microsoft Windows Media Player^© . This application was selected on account of its ubiquity; NECTE users are, of course, at liberty to alter the specification if desired.

• <!ENTITY % interviews SYSTEM 'interviews.ent'> %interviews; declares a file of entity declarations "interviews.ent" and inserts it into DOCTYPE by the '%interviews;' reference (Guidelines 2.7; Guidelines 22.3). The entity declarations in this file are used to insert the interviews into the corpus, as described in the discussion of the document instance.

• <!ENTITY % audiofiles SYSTEM "audiofiles.ent"> %audiofiles; declares a file of entity declarations "audiofiles.ent" and inserts it into DOCTYPE by the '%audiofiles;' reference (Guidelines 2.7; Guidelines 22.3). The entity declarations in this file are used to insert the non-text audio component of the interviews into the corpus, as described in the discussion of the interview structure.