Compiling a corpus of transcribed speech

1. Guy Aston guy@sslmit.unibo.it Compiling a corpus of transcribed speech

2. Anyqs • A corpus for classroom use in training interpreters • Transcribed spontaneous speech (hard to come by) • Understandable without much contextual information (standard format) • Contemporary • A reasonable quantity (currently 850k words) • Basic HTML markup in official transcript (utterances, non-verbals) • Easy to encode in TEI and to index with XAIRA

3. No way is this publicly available • The BBC site contains transcripts of all Any Questions programmes in the last 3 years, which you can download freely for personal non-commercial use. • But/and you cannot adapt, alter or create a derivative work except for your own personal, non-commercial use.

4. What the BBC’s original looks like … • PRESENTER: Jonathan DimblebyPANELLISTS: Lord FalconerMalcolm RifkindAnne McElvoyChris HuhneFROM: Medical Women's Federation, Central LondonDIMBLEBYWelcome to London where we are on the edge of Regent's Park at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Our host here is the Medical Women's Federation, which is holding its 90th anniversary conference here. With its origins in the late 19th Century the federation was in 1917 formed with an initial membership of 190 women doctors. Subjects at the top of their agenda then: Medical women engaged in war and the contemporary challenges of venereal diseases, prostitution, maternity and infant welfare. Plus ca change. Except that today more than half the present crop of medical students are women and the federation's main aim is to keep women doctors active in the medical workforce with all that that implies for part-time training and child welfare.On our panel: the former Lord Chancellor Charlie Falconer. Lord Falconer there have been scurrilous reports in some of the newspapers to the effect that you're not happy with your pension and that you want it to be doubled, it's £52,000 a year, we can presume that you are quite happy yes?FALCONERI think I'd rather not talk about that, if you don't mind Jonathan.DIMBLEBYYou're entirely free not to talk about that which suggests that it's unresolved.The former Foreign Secretary, Sir Malcolm Rifkind; Chris Huhne who wants to be the next leader of the Liberal Democrats - do you like being the underdog?HUHNEI'm not sure, I think - I'm working on it, I'm ambitious not to be the underdog Jonathan.DIMBLEBYAnd Anne McElvoy, executive editor and columnist at the Evening Standard. [CLAPPING]Our first question please.HICKSTom Hicks. Should Ian Blair resign?

5. Marking it up in XML… • In the Header • Programme details (including date) • Participants and roles • Setting • In the Text • Utterance boundaries and their speakers • Sentence boundaries (based on punctuation in transcript) • Non-verbal events (e.g. clapping, laughter, coughs) • Topic boundaries (i.e. new question) • Tokenisation - ‘s • Pos tagging – maybe some day …

6. Overall document structure <TEI> <teiHeader> <fileDesc> <titleStmt> <title> Any questions <date> [Date] </date> </title> </titleStmt> </fileDesc> <profileDesc> [Profile] </profileDesc> </teiHeader> <text> [Text] </text> </TEI>

7. Profile <profileDesc> <particDesc><listPerson> <person who=“name” sex =“f | m” role = “presenter | questioner | party | profession”> <para> fullname</para> </person> </listPerson></particDesc> <settingDesc> <setting> wherefrom</setting> </settingDesc> </profileDesc>

8. Text <text> <div type=“intro”> <u who=“DIMBLEBY”> <s>Welcome to London …</s> <s>And Anne McElvoy, executive editor and columnist at the Evening Standard. </s> <event desc=“clapping”/> <s>Our first question please.</s> </u> </div> <div type=“question> <u who=“HICKS”> <s>Tom Hicks. </s> <s>Should Ian Blair resign? </s> </u> … </div> … </text>

9. Role Lab 1438 / 4617 Con 1225 / 4272 Lib 701 / 2590 Presenter 5437 / 9204 Questioner 838 / 1582 Other 2282 / 8480 Sex Male 10096 / 24829 Female 1817 / 5906 Other 6 / 7 Utterances / Sentences Total 11921 / 30745

10. Occurrences per 1000 <s> UK 293 9‰ Lab 35 7 ‰ Con 11 3 ‰ Lib 16 6 ‰ Other 230 United Kingdom 67 2 ‰ Lab 13 3 ‰ Con 19 4 ‰ Lib 6 2 ‰ Other 29 Occurrences per 1000 <s> Britain 371 12 ‰ Lab 58 12 ‰ Con 84 20 ‰ Lib 31 12 ‰ Other 198 Things to do with it (1): Politically preferred lexis?

11. Things to do with it (2): Fairly frequent features spontaneous speech • Agreement • Agree (138) • Absolutely / actually / certainly / completely / entirely / fully / quite / rather / totally • Disagree (72) • Fundamentally / profoundly

12. The advantages of a small specialised corpus • Homogeneous • Knowable/predictable • Manageable numbers • Deal with all of the data • Less distracting

13. Another appropriate linguistic area • Connectors • In fact (163) • However (131)

14. However – connector or adverb?

15. And another: the subjunctive in speech • It were (128) • As it were (104) • If it were (20) • I wish it were (2)

16. As it were, data

17. Women and vague language • As it were 104 • Male 101 • Female 3

18. As it were (female speakers)

19. So are men vaguer, or do they mark vagueness more? Is this a male politeness strategy? • As it were • BNC male 291 • BNC female 68 • <u> BNC male 301205 • <u> BNC female 306293

20. Do men and women use as it were in the same way? • More research needed