Adding words centered above other words with TikZ

Question

I'm writing a sentence, and I'd like to add labels to the elements of the sentence above those elements. In the example below, I'd like the label Verb to be centered above the verb constitutes and the label Noun to be centered above the noun phrase a sentence.

I think I'd rather do this with TikZ, because I will later add curly braces and arrows and such (but let's do one thing at a time).

In the example below, I've more or less centered the labels manually by eye, which is clearly not the way to do it. How can I center the labels automatically?

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
    \node at (0,0) (Sentence) {This constitutes a sentence};
    \node[above] at (-0.5,0.1) {\footnotesize{Verb}};
    \node[above] at (1.2,0.1) {\footnotesize{Noun}};
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

Answer 1

Not sure if this solution will serve to your further proposes but in any case here it is:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}
This \tikz[baseline]{\node[anchor=text,label={[font=\footnotesize]above:Verb}]{constitutes};}% 
a \tikz[baseline]{\node[anchor=text, label={[font=\footnotesize]above:Noun}]{sentence};} 
\end{document}

Answer 2

The text effects along path decoration may be useful if you want to go further with braces and arrows or drawing around the text in general. The decoration takes a bit of setting up, but it can be customised in quite useful ways, and ultimately a lot of the work can be tidied up in styles.

\documentclass[tikz,border=5]{standalone}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.text, decorations.pathreplacing}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\path [decoration={text effects along path, 
  text=The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,
  text effects/.cd, 
    path from text, text along path,
    group letters, word count=\w,
    every word/.style={name=word-\w, execute at begin node=\strut}},
  decorate] (0,0);

\foreach \pos [count=\i] in {Det, Adj, Adj, Noun, Verb, Prep, Det, Adj, Noun}
  \node [above=1ex, font=\footnotesize\strut] at (word-\i) {\pos};

\draw [decoration={brace, mirror}, decorate] 
   (word-1.south west) -- (word-4.south east)
      node [midway, below] {Noun Phrase};

\draw [decoration={brace, mirror}, decorate] 
   (word-7.south west) -- (word-9.south east)
      node [midway, below] {Noun Phrase};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

And here is one way of tidying things up in styles...

\documentclass[tikz,border=5]{standalone}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.text, decorations.pathreplacing}
\tikzset{%
  mark text/.style args={"#1" using #2}{
    decoration={text effects along path, 
      text={#1},
      text effects/.cd, 
        path from text, text along path,
        group letters, word count=\w,
        every word/.style={name=word-\w, execute at begin node=\strut},
        above word/.style args={##1:##2}{word ##1/.style={label=above:{##2}}},
        %
        #2
    },
    decorate,
    insert path={(0,0)}
  }
}
\begin{document}
\tikz\path [mark text={"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" using 
     above word={1:Det},
     above word={5:Verb},
     above word={9:Noun}
   }];
\end{document}

Answer 3

Here's an option that allows you to place tikz environments inline with your normal text.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}

\newcommand{\inline}[2]{%
    \begin{tikzpicture}[baseline=(word.base), txt/.style={shape=rectangle, inner sep=0pt}]% the baseline key ensures that nodes won't shift up if there's text with descenders, and the txt style removes extra spacing so you can use this inline
    \node[txt] (word) {#1};% the first argument is the contents of the main node
    \node[above] at (word.north) {\footnotesize{#2}};% the second argument is the tag; you can play with the positioning as necessary
    \end{tikzpicture}%
    }

\begin{document}

 This \inline{constitutes}{Verb} \inline{a sentence}{Noun}.

\end{document}

If you want to add arrows connecting these nodes, you could use the remember picture/overlay option to access nodes in a previous tikzpicture (see for example this answer to How can I draw arrows between words in linguistic examples?).

Depending on what else you want to add on, it might make sense to use a matrix, which is similar to a tabular within a tikzpicture. Then you can add all the frills you want to the nodes in the matrix. I've done this when I want to align horizontally align phrases across multiple similar sentences while still having arrows and such internal to each sentence.

(edited to reflect suggestions by Qrrbrbirlbel)

Answer 4

Based on your follow-up questions, I'm starting to think you'd be better off using a glossing package to build your sentences with annotations, and then you can use tikz to add braces, arrows, etc.

Here's an example using expex in combination with tikz. The main idea is that we're placing tikz nodes inside the glosses, and then because we're using remember picture and overlay, we can refer to those nodes outside their original tikzpicture. I've defined an expex style to take care of the horizontal and vertical spacing issues you've described in your follow-up questions. The arrows I put in here could be replaced by braces following Mark Wilbrow's answer or whatever else you want to add. I haven't created an abstracted command for the arrows, but you could do that if you want.

\documentclass{article}

\newlength{\Aheight}
\setlength{\Aheight}{\fontcharht\font`A}

\newlength{\gdepth}
\setlength{\gdepth}{\fontchardp\font`g}

\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{expex}

\lingset{% these are my default settings for using expex for interlinear glosses
    Everyex=,
    glstyle=wrap, %
    everyglpreamble={\itshape}, %
    belowglpreambleskip=-0.2ex, %
    everygla=, %
    everyglft=, %
    aboveglftskip=-0.2ex, %
    interpartskip=1ex, %
    glspace=!0pt plus .2em, %
    glrightskip=0pt plus .5\hsize, %
    aboveexskip=1ex plus .4ex minus .4ex, %
    belowexskip=1.5ex plus .4ex minus .4ex %
} 

\definelingstyle{tags}{% this is a new style that allows you to use tags and arrows or braces
    glwordalign=center,% the words are centered beneath the tags
    everygla=\footnotesize,% the top line is footnotesize
    glspace=0.3em,% horizontal spacing between glwords
    aboveglbskip=0.1ex,% vertical spacing between the tag line and word line
    interpartskip=3.5ex% vertical spacing between parts of a multipart example (increased to allow space for overlaid arrow)
}

\newcommand\txt[2]{%
    \begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture, baseline=(#1.base)]%
    \node[inner xsep=0pt, inner ysep=1pt, text height = \Aheight, text depth = \gdepth] (#1) {#2};% I want to keep some inner ysep so that the arrows don't start and end right at the bottom of the letter
    \end{tikzpicture}%
}

\begin{document}

\pex[lingstyle=tags]
\a \begingl
    \gla xx jj xx jj //
    \glb gggggg \txt{a}{aaaaa} ttttttttt \txt{b}{bbbbb\rlap{.}}//
    \endgl
\a \begingl
    \gla xxxx jjjjjjjj xxxxx jjjjjjjj //
    \glb \txt{g}{gg} aa \txt{t}{tt} bb\rlap{.} //
    \endgl
\xe

\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture, overlay, >=stealth]
\draw[->] (a.south) |- +(0ex,-1.5ex)  -| node[near start,anchor=base,yshift={-1.5ex}] {\footnotesize agreement} (b.south);
\draw[->] (t.south) |- +(0ex,-1.5ex)  -| node[near start,anchor=base,yshift={-1.5ex}] {\footnotesize movement} (g.south);
\end{tikzpicture}

\ex
\begingl
\glpreamble You can still do normal glossing if you leave out the tags lingstyle//
\gla Ndi-\O-ani wa-v-aka-teng-er-a  \O-rokwe ku-chi-toro nezuro? //
\glb \textsc{cop}-1a-who 1a.\textsc{nse}-2.\textsc{sm}-\textsc{pst}-buy-\textsc{appl}-\textsc{fv} 5-dress 17-7-store yesterday //
\glft `Who(m) did they buy a dress (for) at the store yesterday?'\trailingcitation{(2014-09-09-01-TD)} //
\endgl
\xe

\end{document}

Answer 5

Here, I use stackengine methods to stack the text. It provides a variety of formats for this, relative to alignments, gaps, over/under stacks, top/bottom lapping, etc.

I added \def\useanchorwidth{T} to the definition, which allows a wider overset not to affect the spacing of the primary sentence. This, of course, can be removed, as it could result in overlap of overset material.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz,stackengine}
\newcommand\notate[2]{\def\useanchorwidth{T}\def\stacktype{L}\stackon{#1}{\footnotesize#2}}
\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
    \node at (0,0) (Sentence) {%
  This \notate{constitutes}{Verb} a \notate{sentence}{Noun}};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}