Each distinct utterance in a spoken text is represented by a u element, described as follows:

Use of the who attribute to associate the utterance with a particular speaker is recommended but not required. Its use implies as a further requirement that all speakers be identified by a person or personGrp element in the TEI header (see section ), but it may also point to another external source of information about the speaker. Where utterances or other parts of the transcription cannot be attributed with confidence to any particular participant or group of participants, the encoder may choose to create personGrp elements with xml:id attributes such as various or unknown, and perhaps give the root listPerson element an xml:id value of all, then point to those as appropriate using who.

The trans attribute is provided as a means of characterizing the transition from one utterance to the next at a simpler level of detail than that provided by the temporal alignment mechanism discussed in section . The value specified applies to the transition from the preceding utterance into the utterance bearing the attribute. For example:For the most part, the examples in this chapter use no sentence punctuation except to mark the rising intonation often found in interrogative statements; for further discussion, see section . Have you heard the the election results? yes it's a disaster it's a miracle In this example, utterance ts_b1 latches on to utterance ts_a1, while there is a marked pause between ts_b1 and ts_a2. ts_b2 and ts_a2 overlap, but by an unspecified amount. For ways of providing a more precise indication of the degree of overlap, see section .

An utterance may contain either running text, or text within which other basic structural elements are nested. Where such nesting occurs, the who attribute is considered to be inherited for the elements pause, vocal, shift and kinesic; that is, a pause or shift (etc.) within an utterance is regarded as being produced by that speaker only, while a pause between utterances applies to all speakers.

Occasionally, an utterance may seem to contain other utterances, for example where one speaker interrupts himself, or when another speaker produces a back-channel while they are still speaking. The present version of these Guidelines does not support nesting of one u element within another. The transcriber must therefore decide whether such interruptions constitute a change of utterance, or whether other elements may be used. In the case of self-interruption, the shift element may be used to show that the speaker has changed the quality of their speech: Listen to this The government is confident, he said, that the current economic problems will be completely overcome by June what nonsense Alternatively the incident element described in section might be used, without transcribing the read material: Listen to this reads aloud from newspaper what nonsense

Often, back-channelling is only semi-lexicalized and may therefore be represented using the vocal element: So what could I have done tut-tutting about it anyway? Where this is not possible, it is simplest to regard the back-channel as a distinct utterance.

Speakers differ very much in their rhythm and in particular in the amount of time they leave between words. The following element is provided to mark occasions where the transcriber judges that speech has been paused, irrespective of the actual amount of silence: A pause contained by an utterance applies to the speaker of that utterance. A pause between utterances applies to all speakers. The type attribute may be used to categorize the pause, for example as short, medium, or long; alternatively the attribute dur may be used to indicate its length more exactly, as in the following example: Okay U-mthe scene opens up with um you see a tree okay? If detailed synchronization of pausing with other vocal phenomena is required, the alignment mechanism defined at section and discussed informally below should be used. Note that the trans attribute mentioned in the previous section may also be used to characterize the degree of pausing between (but not within) utterances.

The presence of non-transcribed semi-lexical or non-lexical phenomena either between or within utterances may be indicated with the following three elements.

The who attribute should be used to specify the person or group responsible for a vocal, kinesic, or incident which is contained within an utterance, if this differs from that of the enclosing utterance. The attribute must be supplied for a vocal, kinesic, or incident which is not contained within an utterance.

The iterated attribute may be used to indicate that the vocal, kinesic, or incident is repeated, for example laughter as opposed to laugh. These should both be distinguished from laughing, where what is being encoded is a shift in voice quality. For this last case, the shift element discussed in section should be used.

A child desc element may be used to supply a conventional representation for the phenomenon, for example: non-lexical burp, click, cough, exhale, giggle, gulp, inhale, laugh, sneeze, sniff, snort, sob, swallow, throat, yawn semi-lexical ah, aha, aw, eh, ehm, er, erm, hmm, huh, mm, mmhm, oh, ooh, oops, phew, tsk, uh, uh-huh, uh-uh, um, urgh, yup Researchers may prefer to regard some semi-lexical phenomena as words within the bounds of the u element. See further the discussion at section below. As for all basic categories, the definition should be made clear in the encodingDesc element of the TEI header.

Some typical examples follow: This is just delicious telephone rings I'll get it I used to cough smoke a lot sniffsHe thinks he's tough snorts Note that Ann's snorting could equally well be encoded as follows: snorts

The extent to which encoding of incidents or kinesics is included in a transcription will depend entirely on the purpose for which the transcription was made. As elsewhere, this will depend on the particular research agenda and the extent to which their presence is felt to be significant for the interpretation of spoken interactions.

Written text may also be encountered when speech is transcribed, for example in a television broadcast or cinema performance, or where one participant shows written text to another. The writing element may be used to distinguish such written elements from the spoken text in which they are embedded. For example, if speaker A in the breakfast table conversation in section above had simply shown the newspaper passage to her interlocutor instead of reading it, the interaction might have been encoded as follows: look at this Government claims economic problems over by June what nonsense!

If the source of the writing being displayed is known, bibliographic information about it may be stored in a listBibl within the sourceDesc element of the TEI header, and then pointed to using the source attribute. For example, in the following imaginary example, a lecturer displays two different versions of the same passage of text: Shakespeare First Folio text Shakespeare Second Folio text .... now compare the punctuation of lines 12 and 14 in these two versions of page 42... .... ....

As noted above, utterances, vocals, pauses, kinesics, incidents, and writing elements all inherit attributes providing information about their position in time from the classes att.timed and att.duration. These attributes can be used to link parts of the transcription very exactly with points on a timeline, or simply to indicate their duration. Note that if start and end point to when elements whose temporal distance from each other is specified in a timeline, then dur is ignored.

The anchor element (see ) may be used as an alternative means of aligning the start and end of timed elements, and is required when the temporal alignment involves points within an element.

For further discussion of temporal alignment and synchronization see below.

A common requirement in transcribing spoken language is to mark positions at which a variety of prosodic features change. Many paralinguistic features (pitch, prominence, loudness, etc.) characterize stretches of speech which are not co-extensive with utterances or any of the other units discussed so far. One simple method of encoding such units is simply to mark their boundaries. An empty element called shift is provided for this purpose. A shift element may appear within an utterance or a segment to mark a significant change in the particular feature defined by its attributes, which is then understood to apply to all subsequent utterances for the same speaker, unless changed by a new shift for the same feature in the same speaker. Intervening utterances by other speakers do not normally carry the same feature. For example: Elizabeth Yes Come and try this come on In this example, the word Elizabeth is spoken loudly, the words Yes and Come and try this with normal volume, and the words come on very loudly.

The values proposed here for the feature attribute are based on those used by the Survey of English Usage (see further Boase 1990); this list may be revised or supplemented using the methods outlined in section .

The new attribute specifies the new state of the feature following the shift. If this attribute has the special value normal, the implication is that the feature concerned ceases to be remarkable at this point.

A list of suggested values for each of the features proposed follows: tempo a allegro (fast) aa very fastacc accelerando (getting faster)l lento (slow)ll very slowrall rallentando (getting slower) loud (for loudness): f forte (loud)ff very loudcresc crescendo (getting louder)p piano (soft)pp very softdimin diminuendo (getting softer) pitch (for pitch range): high high pitch-rangelow low pitch-rangewide wide pitch-rangenarrow narrow pitch-rangeasc ascendingdesc descendingmonot monotonousscand scandent, each succeeding syllable higher than the last, generally ending in a falling tone tension: sl slurredlax lax, a little slurredten tensepr very precisest staccato, every stressed syllable being doubly stressedleg legato, every syllable receiving more or less equal stress rhythm: rh beatable rhythmarrh arrhythmic, particularly haltingspr spiky rising, with markedly higher unstressed syllablesspf spiky falling, with markedly lower unstressed syllablesglr glissando rising, like spiky rising but the unstressed syllables, usually several, also rise in pitch relative to each otherglf glissando falling, like spiky falling but with the unstressed syllables also falling in pitch relative to each other voice (for voice quality): whisp whisperbreath breathyhusk huskycreak creakyfals falsettoreson resonantgiggle unvoiced laugh or gigglelaugh voiced laughtrem tremuloussob sobbingyawn yawningsigh sighing

A full definition of the sense of the values provided for each feature should be provided in the encoding description section of the text header (see section ).

For some analytic purposes it may be desirable to subdivide the divisions of a spoken text into units smaller than the individual utterance or turn. Segmentation may be performed for a number of different purposes and in terms of a variety of speech phenomena. Common examples include units defined both prosodically (by intonation, pausing, etc.) and syntactically (clauses, phrases, etc.) The term macrosyntagm has been used by a number of researchers to define units peculiar to speech transcripts.The term was apparently first proposed by , where it is defined as follows: A text can be analysed as a sequence of segments which are internally connected by a network of syntactic relations and externally delimited by the absence of such relations with respect to neighbouring segments. Such a segment is a syntactic unit called a macrosyntagm (trans. S. Johansson).

These Guidelines propose that such analyses be performed in terms of neutrally-named segments, represented by the seg element, which is discussed more fully in section . This element may take a type attribute to specify the kind of segmentation applicable to a particular segment, if more than one is possible in a text. A full definition of the segmentation scheme or schemes used should be provided in the segmentation element of the editorialDecl element in the TEI header (see ).

In the first example below, an utterance has been segmented according to a notion of syntactic completeness not necessarily marked by the speech, although in this case a pause has been recorded between the two sentence-like units. In the second, the segments are defined prosodically (an acute accent has been used to mark the position immediately following the syllable bearing the primary accent or stress), and may be thought of as tone units. we went to the pub yesterday there was no one there although its an old ide´a it hasnt been on the mar´ket very long In either case, the segmentation element in the header of the text should specify the principles adopted to define the segments marked in this way.

When utterances are segmented end-to-end in the same way as the s-units in written texts, the s element discussed in chapter may be used, either as an alternative or in addition to the more general purpose seg element. The s element is available without formality in all texts, but does not allow segments to nest within each other.

Where segments of different kinds are to be distinguished within the same stretch of speech, the type attribute may be used, as in the following example: I think this chap was writing and he said hello said hello and he said I'm going to a gate at twenty past seven he said ok right away and so on they went and they were writing there In this example, recoded from a corpus of language-impaired speech prepared by Fletcher and Garman, the speaker's utterance has been fully segmented into clausal (type="C") or minor (type="M") units.

For some features, it may be more appropriate or convenient to introduce a new element in a custom namespace: and he said I'm going to a gate at twenty past seven Here, ext:paraphasia has been used to define a particular characteristic of this corpus for which no element exists in the TEI scheme. See further chapter for a discussion of the way in which this kind of user-defined extension of the TEI scheme may be performed and chapter for the mechanisms on which it depends.

This example also uses the core elements gap and del to mark editorial decisions concerning matter completely omitted from the transcript (because of inaudibility), and words which have been transcribed but which the transcriber wishes to exclude from the segment because they are repeated, respectively. See section for a discussion of these and related elements.

It is often the case that the desired segmentation does not respect utterance boundaries; for example, syntactic units may cross utterance boundaries. For a detailed discussion of this problem, and the various methods proposed by these Guidelines for handling it, see chapter . Methods discussed there include these: milestone tags may be used; the special-purpose shift tag discussed in section is an extension of this method where several discontinuous segments are to be grouped together to form a syntactic unit (e.g. a phrasal verb with interposed complement), the join element may be used

A major difference between spoken and written texts is the importance of the temporal dimension to the former. As a very simple example, consider the following, first as it might be represented in a playscript: Jane: Have you read Vanity Fair? Stig: Yes Lou: (nods vigorously) To encode this, we first define the participants: Let us assume that Stig and Lou respond to Jane's question before she has finished asking it—a fairly normal situation in spontaneous speech. The simplest way of representing this overlap would be to use the trans attribute previously discussed: have you read Vanity Fair yes However, this does not allow us to indicate either the extent to which Stig's utterance is overlapped, nor does it show that there are in fact three things which are synchronous: the end of Jane's utterance, Stig's whole utterance, and Lou's kinesic. To overcome these problems, more sophisticated techniques, employing the mechanisms for pointing and alignment discussed in detail in section , are needed. If the module for linking has been enabled (as described in section above), one way to represent the simple example above would be as follows: have you read Vanity Fair yes nods head vertically

For a full discussion of this and related mechanisms, section should be consulted. The rest of the present section, which should be read in conjunction with that more detailed discussion, presents a number of ways in which these mechanisms may be applied to the specific problem of representing temporal alignment, synchrony, or overlap in transcribing spoken texts.

In the simple example above, the first utterance (that with identifier utt1) contains an anchor element, the function of which is simply to mark a point within it. The synch attribute associated with this anchor point specifies the identifiers of the other two elements which are to be synchronized with it: specifically, the second utterance (utt2) and the kinesic (k1). Note that one of these elements has content and the other is empty.

This example demonstrates only a way of indicating a point within one utterance at which it can be synchronized with another utterance and a kinesic. For more complex kinds of alignment, involving possibly multiple synchronization points, an additional element is provided, known as a timeline. This consists of a series of when elements, each representing a point in time, and bearing attributes which indicate its exact temporal position relative to other elements in the same timeline, in addition to the sequencing implied by its position within it.

For example: This timeline represents four points in time, named TS-P1, TS-P2, TS-P6, and TS-P3 (as with all attributes named xml:id in the TEI scheme, the names must be unique within the document but have no other significance). TS-P1 is located absolutely, at 12:20:01:01 BST. TS-P2 is 4.5 seconds later than TS-P2 (i.e. at 12:20:46). TS-P6 is at some unspecified time later than TS-P2 and previous to TS-P3 (this is implied by its position within the timeline, as no attribute values have been specified for it). The fourth point, TS-P3, is 1.5 seconds later than TS-P6.

One or more such timelines may be specified within a spoken text, to suit the encoder's convenience. If more than one is supplied, the origin attribute may be used on each to specify which other timeline element it follows. The unit attribute indicates the units used for timings given on when elements contained by the alignment map. Alternatively, to avoid the need to specify times explicitly, the interval attribute may be used to indicate that all the when elements in a time line are a fixed distance apart.

Three methods are available for aligning points or elements within a spoken text with the points in time defined by the timeline: The elements to be synchronized may specify the identifier of a when element as the value of one of the start, end, or synch attributes The when element may specify the identifiers of all the elements to be synchronized with it using the synch attribute A free-standing link element may be used to associate the when element and the elements synchronized with it by specifying their identifiers as values for its target attribute.

For example, using the timeline given above: This is my turn The start of utterance TS-U1 is aligned with TS-P2 and its end with TS-P3. The transition between the words my and turn occurs at point TS-P6A, which is synchronous with point TS-P6 on the timeline.

The synchronization represented by the preceding examples could equally well be represented as follows: This is my turn Here, the whole of the object with identifier ts-u1 (the utterance) has been aligned with two different points, ts-p2 and ts-p3. This is interpreted to mean that the utterance spans at least those two points.

Finally, a linkGrp may be used as an alternative to the synch attribute: This is my turn

As a further example of the three possibilities, consider the following dialogue, represented first as it might appear in a conventional playscript: Tom: I used to smoke - - Bob: (interrupting) You used to smoke? Tom: (at the same time) a lot more than this. But I never inhaled the smoke A commonly used convention might be to transcribe such a passage as follows: (1) I used to smoke [ a lot more than this ] (2)                 [ you used to smoke ] (1) but I never inhaled the smoke Such conventions have the drawback that they are hard to generalize or to extend beyond the very simple case presented here. Their reliance on the accidentals of physical layout may also make them difficult to transport and to process computationally. These Guidelines recommend the following mechanisms to encode this.

Where the whole of one or another utterance is to be synchronized, the start and end attributes may be used: I used to smoke a lot more than this but I never inhaled the smoke You used to smoke Note that the second utterance above could equally well be encoded as follows with exactly the same effect: You used to smoke

If synchronization with specific timing information is required, a timeline must be included: I used to smoke a lot more than this but I never inhaled the smoke You used to smoke (Note that If only the ordering or sequencing of utterances is needed, then specific timing information shown here in unit, absolute and interval does not need to be provided.)

As above, since the whole of Bob's utterance is to be aligned, the start and end attributes may be used as an alternative to the second pair of anchor elements: You used to smoke

An alternative approach is to mark the synchronization by pointing from the timeline to the text: I used to smoke a lot more than this but I never inhaled the smoke You used to smoke To avoid deciding whether to point from the timeline to the text or vice versa, a linkGrp may be used: I used to smoke a lot more than this but I never inhaled the smoke You used to smoke

Note that in each case, although Bob's utterance follows Tom's sequentially in the text, it is aligned temporally with its middle, without any need to disrupt the normal syntax of the text.

As a final example, consider the following exchange, first as it might be represented using a musical-score-like notation, in which points of synchronization are represented by vertical alignment of the text: Stig: This is |my  |turn Jane:         |Balderdash Lou :         |No, |it's mine All three speakers are simultaneous at the words my, Balderdash, and No; speakers Stig and Lou are simultaneous at the words turn and it's. This could be encoded as follows, using pointers from the alignment map into the text: this is my turn balderdash no it's mine

When speech is transcribed using ordinary orthographic notation, as is customary, some compromise must be made between the sounds produced and conventional orthography. Particularly when dealing with informal, dialectal, or other varieties of language, the transcriber will frequently have to decide whether a particular sound is to be treated as a distinct vocabulary item or not. For example, while in a given project kinda may not be worth distinguishing as a vocabulary item from kind of, isn't may clearly be worth distinguishing from is not; for some purposes, the regional variant isnae might also be worth distinguishing in the same way.

One rule of thumb might be to allow such variation only where a generally accepted orthographic form exists, for example, in published dictionaries of the language register being encoded; this has the disadvantage that such dictionaries may not exist. Another is to maintain a controlled (but extensible) set of normalized forms for all such words; this has the advantage of enforcing some degree of consistency among different transcribers. Occasionally, as for example when transcribing abbreviations or acronyms, it may be felt necessary to depart from conventional spelling to distinguish between cases where the abbreviation is spelled out letter by letter (e.g. B B C or V A T) and where it is pronounced as a single word (VAT or RADA). Similar considerations might apply to pronunciation of foreign words (e.g. Monsewer vs. Monsieur).

In general, use of punctuation, capitalization, etc., in spoken transcripts should be carefully controlled. It is important to distinguish the transcriber's intuition as to what the punctuation should be from the marking of prosodic features such as pausing, intonation, etc.

Whatever practice is adopted, it is essential that it be clearly and fully documented in the editorial declarations section of the header. It may also be found helpful to include normalized forms of non-conventional spellings within the text, using the elements for simple editorial changes described in section (see further section ).

In the absence of conventional punctuation, the marking of prosodic features assumes paramount importance, since these structure and organize the spoken message. Indeed, such prosodic features as points of primary or secondary stress may be represented by specialized punctuation marks, or other characters such as those provided by the Unicode Spacing Modifier Letters block. Pauses have already been dealt with in section ; while tone units (or intonational phrases) can be indicated by the segmentation tag discussed in section . The shift element discussed in section may also be used to encode some prosodic features, for example where all that is required is the ability to record shifts in voice quality.

In a more detailed phonological transcript, it is common practice to include a number of conventional signs to mark prosodic features of the surrounding or (more usually) preceding speech. Such signs may be used to record, for example, particular intonation patterns, truncation, vowel quality (long or short) etc. These signs may be preserved in a transcript either by using conventional punctuation or by marking their presence by g elements. Where a transcript includes many phonetic or phonemic aspects, it will generally be more convenient to use the appropriate Unicode characters (see further chapters and ). For representation of phonemic information, the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, which can be represented in Unicode characters, is recommended.

In the following example, special characters have been defined as follows within the encodingDesc of the TEI header low fall intonation low rise intonation fall rise intonation rise fall intonation lengthened syllable shortened syllable These declarations might additionally provide information about how the characters concerned should be rendered, their equivalent IPA form, etc. In the transcript itself references to them can then be included as follows:

This example, which is taken from a corpus of bookshop service encounters, also demonstrates the use of the unclear and gap elements discussed in section . Where words are so unclear that only their extent can be recorded, the empty gap element may be used; where the encoder can identify the words but wishes to record a degree of uncertainty about their accuracy, the unclear element may be used. More flexible and detailed methods of indicating uncertainty are discussed in chapter .

For more detailed work, involving a detailed phonological transcript including representation of stress and pitch patterns, it is probably best to maintain the prosodic description in parallel with the conventional written transcript, rather than attempt to embed detailed prosodic information within it. The two parallel streams may be aligned with each other and with other streams, for example an acoustic encoding, using the general alignment mechanisms discussed in section .

Phenomena of speech management include disfluencies such as filled and unfilled pauses, interrupted or repeated words, corrections, and reformulations as well as interactional devices asking for or providing feedback. Depending on the importance attached to such features, transcribers may choose to adopt conventionalized representations for them (as discussed in section above), or to transcribe them using IPA or some other transcription system. To simplify analysis of the lexical features of a speech transcript, it may be felt useful to tidy away many of these disfluencies. Where this policy has been adopted, these Guidelines recommend the use of the tags for simple editorial intervention discussed in section , to make explicit the extent of regularization or normalization performed by the transcriber.

For example, false starts, repetition, and truncated words might all be included within a transcript, but marked as editorially deleted, in the following way: ssee you you you know it's he's crazy

As previously noted, the gap element may be used to mark points within a transcript where words have been omitted, for example because they are inaudible, as in the following example in which 5 seconds of speech is drowned out by an external event:

The unclear element may be used to mark words which have been included although the transcriber is unsure of their accuracy: ...and then marbled queen

Where a transcriber is believed to have incorrectly identified a word, the elements corr or sic embedded within a choice element may be used to indicate both the original and a corrected form of it: SCSIskuzzy These elements are further discussed in section .

Finally phenomena such as code-switching, where a speaker switches from one language to another, may easily be represented in a transcript by using the foreign element provided by the core tagset: I proposed that wir können vielleicht go to warsaw and vienna

The recommendations made here only concern the establishment of a basic text. Where a more sophisticated analysis is needed, more sophisticated methods of markup will also be appropriate, for example, using stand-off markup to indicate multiple segmentation of the stream of discourse, or complex alignment of several segments within it. Where additional annotations (sometimes called codes or tags) are used to represent such features as linguistic word class (noun, verb, etc.), type of speech act (imperative, concessive, etc.), or information status (theme/rheme, given/new, active/semi-active/new), etc., a selection from the general purpose analytic tools discussed in chapters , , and may be used to advantage.