Standardization and Transcription

[Susan M. Powers]

Dear Ms. Prechter,

Here at the university of Potsdam, we use the following conventions. We
use () For the adult speech which is reduced. For example:

s(i)e
(ei)n
(den)n
(u)n(d)
(ei)ne
nich(t)
(ha)t
ma(l)
fall(e)n

as it is certain that the adult has the full form. For similar forms in
the child's speech we use [= ] as in

ne [= eine] Ente.

so that we actually have what the child said and can track these forms
over time. We also use [= ] for adult dialectal variation,  as in:

dis [= das]
des [= das]

for cliticized forms (of the adult) we use [: ] as in:

ham [: haben wir]
mitm [: mit dem]
isn [: is denn]
machs [: macht es]
son [: so ein]
wos [: wo is]
haste [: hast du]
machstn [: machst du ein] or [: machst du denn]
isn [: is denn]
kennste [: kennst du]
gibstn [: gibst du ein]
hastn [: hast du denn]
machts [: macht es]
gehts [: geht es]
zeigs [: zeig es]
musste [: musst du denn]
gibstes [: gibst du es]
fuers [: fuer es]

With regard to training undergraduate students to transcribe, I offer a
course on Empirical Methods every year and the first 3 months are spent
teaching the students CHAT. What I have found to be the most effective
is to introduce students to the system by providing then with the
guidelines and then give them an ill-formatted transcript to check (on
paper). Then they enter the changes onto the computer file in CED and
check it with CHECK until it is perfect.

I have also had students make transcripts from audio tapes. The usual
complaint is the standard transcriber complaint:  it is often very
difficult to decide where one utterance ends and the next begins (a good
discussion of this issue can be found in the manual). However, deciding
where the utterance boundaries are is much easier if you use SONIC CHAT.

Susan Powers
Linguistics Department
University of Potsdam