CHAT TRANSCRIPTION TRAINING MANUAL. AphasiaBank

Transcription

1 CHAT TRANSCRIPTION TRAINING MANUAL AphasiaBank

2 Table of Contents 1. DOWNLOADING CLAN CONFIGURING CLAN AND COMPUTER ACCESSING APHASIABANK DATA DOWNLOADING AND READING THE CHAT AND CLAN MANUALS TRANSCRIBING a. Creating Folders b. Creating a New Transcription File: Obligatory Headers c. Transcribing in Walker Controller Window d. Transcribing in Transcribe (F5) Mode LINKING A TRANSCRIPT a. Using the Spacebar b. Manual Bullet Editing CHECKING A TRANSCRIPT a. Using Esc-L b. Using Commands Window c. MOR Check TIPS FOR TRANSCRIBING APHASIC LANGUAGE SUMMARY

3 INTRODUCTION This manual covers the process of creating a CHAT transcript. You can also refer to the CHAT and CLAN manuals, which contain excellent information, instructions, and examples. (Section 4 gives Instructions for Downloading the CHAT and CLAN Manuals). CHAT transcripts can be created in a number of different ways. We will present two approaches: Walker Controller Window and Transcribe (F5) Mode. As you become more facile with the program, the process, and the website resources, you can use what works best for you. It's important to grasp the basics, though, and while it's not difficult, it does require a lot of attention to a lot of details. Margie and Davida will be happy to help you. Don t hesitate to (forbesmm@andrew.cmu.edu, fromm@andrew.cmu.edu) or call ( ). 1. DOWNLOADING CLAN The first thing you will need to do is download CLAN. Open your browser (e.g., Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer). Before continuing, it would be best to set your browser to download files to the Desktop. In the browser menu at the top of the screen, click on the browser name (Firefox or Safari) and select Preferences. Make sure you re in the Main or General section. One of the options to set is where to save your downloaded files. Select Desktop. If you are using Safari, you can also check the box that says Open "safe" files after downloading to make the process easier. Close the Preferences box and get back to the main page of your browser. Type in the address window. Click on the link for CLAN: Program. Choose which system you'll be using and PLEASE read all the relevant instructions on the page carefully. Then click on the appropriate link -- CLANWin for Windows, CLAN for Mac, or UnixCLAN for Unix. PC users need to download QuickTime if it's not already installed on your computer; MacIntosh users already have QuickTime installed. For Mac users, click on the CLAN link and follow the web browser instructions for downloading. Click to open the CLAN.dmg file and then click to start the installer and follow the instructions for installing CLAN. The CLAN application will be installed in your Applications folder and your working directory will be: Applications/CLAN/work. You can delete the CLAN.dmg folder and eject the CLAN icon that looks like a hard drive when the installation is finished. 3

4 You may want to drag the CLAN file icon from your Applications folder into the dock to create a link for easy access. For PC users, CLAN will automatically install in c:/talkbank and your working directory will be c:/talkbank/clan/work. You may need to restart your computer after all the downloads and setups. To update an existing CLAN program, simply go to Click on the CLAN program for Windows or Mac and follow the instructions for installing. Once the program has installed, you can delete any icons left on your desktop from the download process. To double check that the CLAN program is actually the new and improved one, just open the CLAN program and look at the date at the bottom of the Commands window that appears on your screen. (If the Commands window doesn t automatically appear, Mac users can hit COMMAND-D, PC users can use CTL-D, and all users can go to the menu bar and click on Window and select Commands). 2. CONFIGURING CLAN AND COMPUTER The first time CLAN is used after being installed on your computer, it will require some configuring. Go to the CLAN menu bar, click on Edit, and select the Select F5 option. Then choose the option Bullet on every tier, set the Segment length to 0, and click OK. Click on Edit again and select CLAN Options. In the box next to Checkpoint Every, set the number to 15. In the box next to Limit of lines in CLAN Output, set the number to 500. In the box next to Tier for disambiguation enter %MOR:. Make sure the following 2 boxes (if they appear on your screen) are checked: No file backup, Restore cursor on file open. Then click OK. CLAN also needs to know where the depfile is located because it contains standards against which your transcripts are verified. To accomplish this you need to know where CLAN is located on your computer. (If you followed our advice above, it s in your Applications Folder.) Find the CLAN program and open it by double clicking on it. Make sure that the Commands window is visible. If it is not, go up to the menu bar, click on Windows and select Commands or use the COMMAND-D keys on Mac and CTRL-D on PC. Click on the lib button to select the lib folder. After that you will get a box asking you to locate this folder. The lib folder is located in the same folder where the CLAN application is located. After you locate it, double click on the file called lib and then click on Select folder. Now you can close that window. 4

5 For later analyses, you will need to have the English MOR grammar on your computer. You will find it at the CHILDES website ( where you will see a list of MOR grammars for various languages. Click on English and a zipped file will download to your desktop (or wherever your downloads go). Unzipping this file will create a folder called english. The english folder can be kept in the /CLAN/work folder or as its own folder in your hard drive. For Mac users: Please make sure that your function keys operate correctly. To do that you should click on the APPLE icon in the top left corner of your screen. Select System Preferences and then click on Dashboard & Expose (or whatever icon has the word Expose in its title). In the lower half of the window, if you see F9 in one of the boxes, click on it and select the dash located somewhere in the pop-up menu to replace the F9. Now the F9 button should work properly for transcribing with Walker Controller. For any Mac keyboard with function keys that perform multiple functions (e.g., a function key may also control the brightness of the computer screen): You need to enable your function keys. Click on the APPLE icon in the top left corner of your screen. Select System Preferences and then click on Keyboard & Mouse. Make sure there is a checkmark in the box next to the words that say Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys. 3. ACCESSING APHASIABANK DATA To access data from the AphasiaBank database, go to (or go to and click on AphasiaBank). On the AphasiaBank page, look under the Database heading and you will see one link for the transcript database and one for the media database. To download transcript data, click on the Transcript Database link. A dialog box will appear asking for Name and Password information. For Name, type in broca. To receive the Password, please contact Brian MacWhinney at macw@cmu.edu. You should now see an index of the data by language. A Database Guide is available at the AphasiaBank website describing all of the corpora. The majority of the data for the AphasiaBank project are stored in the English Directory in the Aphasia and Control folders. Click on a folder and you will see a list of corpora (Adler, BU, etc.). Choose which corpus you want and click on the corpus name. (Depending on which browser you are using and how it is configured, minor variations may occur.) You should see a folder appear on your Desktop with the same name as the corpus you chose. If a zip file also appears, you can delete it. If only the zip file appears, double click on it to get the folder icon. If you see a Downloads box and it remains on your computer you can close it. The folder you downloaded (transcript archives) should contain transcript data files with a.cha extension. 5

6 All AphasiaBank transcripts are linked to either audio or video media. If you want to play the original media using continuous playback, you will need to make sure that CLAN can locate the media files. There are multiple ways to use CLAN to view the transcripts and view the media associated with it: 1) If you just want to listen to and follow a transcript without changing anything, you can use the Browsable Database. At the AphasiaBank website you can click on the Browsable Database link and follow the directions. 2) If you want to work more intensively with the transcript, for example to use F5 or Walker Controller for transcribing, coding, or linking (explained in the Transcribing section), you should download the media file from the Media Database. To download media data, click on the Media Database link at the AphasiaBank website. Then click on the Name of the corpus you want and you will see a list of media files. Right click (or control-click) on the file you want. Select the Download Linked File or Save Link As or Save Target as option. The media file will appear on your Desktop or where all of your browser downloads go. Place the media file in the folder in the transcript data folder you downloaded so that the transcript files and media files are in the same place. Note: After downloading transcript data from AphasiaBank, take a look at the folder contents. If the data files have the.cha extension, then it's CHAT data. If the icons say CLAN vertically down the left side of what looks like a light blue book, you are all set. However, if the.cha file icons are olive green and white and say MIXER, you need to make a global change because it means this.cha extension is associated with another application on your computer. You need to highlight one of those.cha files (left click on it) and then go up to the menu bar, click on File and select Get Info. Go down to the option for Open with. It probably says Adobe Photoshop. Click on the blue arrows and select the CLAN.app option. Then, just below that, click on the Change All button. You will likely get a warning message asking if you're sure you want to change all your CLAN.app documents to open with the application CLAN.app. Click on the Continue button. The folder will probably only show you that the file you highlighted got changed, but rest assured the others are changed as well and the icons will change after you close and reopen the folder. 4. DOWNLOADING AND READING THE CHAT AND CLAN MANUALS You can access the CHAT and CLAN manuals online at Under the heading, Programs, click on CHAT: Manual. (The manuals are also available on the AphasiaBank website, You can save 6

7 them and keep them as pdf files on your computer or just access them from the website as needed. 5. TRANSCRIBING Note: These instructions are written for Mac computers. Aside from some navigational differences, the only difference for PC users, is to use the CTRL key instead of the Command key. 5.a. Creating Folders In preparation, you may want to create a folder on your desktop or on your hard drive for your CHAT files. We recommend not having spaces in your folder name and definitely not in your file names. You can leave this folder on your desktop or you can move it to a more convenient location. Now, as you prepare to start transcribing, you should put the audio/video file you plan to use into the folder you just created. To download actual media data from the AphasiaBank website ( and click on the Media Database under the heading Database. After entering Name and Password (covered in Section 3), you will see an index of the AphasiaBank media files. Click on the Name of the corpus you want and you will see a list of media files. Right click (or control-click) on the file you want. Select the Download Linked File or Save Link As or Save Target as option. The media file will appear on your Desktop (or wherever your browser downloads go). Drag it to the new folder you just created for your CHAT files. Remember: 1) it is always important for the media files to be kept in the master folder (or a media subfolder of the master folder) that contains their corresponding CHAT transcript files; and 2) make sure the media file names have no spaces in them. Close all your open windows and you're ready to start. 5.b. Creating a New Transcription File: Obligatory Headers We strongly urge you to transcribe within the CLAN program (as opposed to Word or some other word processing program) and will explain 2 different techniques: Walker Controller Window and Transcribe (F5) Mode. To start, open the CLAN program. Go to File in the menu bar and click on New (or hit COMMAND-N). The very first time you do this, you'll have to type in the first few lines of the transcript. You can then save these initial lines as a template and use it for future 7

8 transcripts by simply modifying the participant info or whatever details need to be added or changed to identify the specific file. The first few lines you need to type in are given below, but please note in advance that: 1) every line must end with a carriage return and have no extra spaces; and 2) after the colon, you must hit the tab button (do not use the PAR Participant, INV Investigator The Languages codes come from the international ISO standard and are listed in the manual under the section entitled Obligatory Headers. They must be entered as shown -- lower case, 3 letters. The Participants entries must be formatted as 3 capital letters (PAR), which is the first speaker ID (the participant), followed by a space, followed by the Role (Participant), followed by a comma and a space, then another 3 capital letters (INV) for the second speaker, a space, and then the Role (Investigator). You can put ID names/numbers in between the speaker ID and speaker Role if you want. A fixed set of Roles is specified in the program. They are listed in the manual under the section entitled Obligatory Headers and also in the depfile next to tier. After getting these first 3 lines in the file, you need ID Header lines. The finished product should look like eng Adler PAR 69;9. male Conduction Participant eng Adler INV Investigator The key for the Participant line info eng corpus PAR age sex WAB-type role WAB-AQ The ID lines can be inserted automatically by the CLAN program, or you can copy those lines from previous transcripts and change the parts that relate specifically to this participant, or you can use a drop down menu from the CLAN menu. To do this from the CLAN menu, click on Tiers and select ID Headers. Then fill in the relevant fields and when you re finished, click Done: Language: eng Corpus name: Adler Age: years;months. Sex: check appropriate box Group: WAB-type Social economic: (leave blank) Role: Participant 8

9 Education: Custom field: (we haven t been entering this) WAB-AQ To have CLAN do it automatically, place your cursor at the end of the Participants line, hit the ESC button and then the L (don't hit them both at the same time and don't hold ESC down while you hit L -- just hit ESC, let it go, then hit L). Or, to accomplish the same thing you can go up the CLAN menu, click on Mode and select Check opened file. Both of these actions initiate a CLAN procedure called Check. It will put lines into your transcript and it may cause a Warning box to appear on your screen. Close the Warning box by clicking on the blue bar at the bottom of the window, which says Click here when ready to continue. You ll notice the words change_me_later located between the first and second vertical lines of the ID lines that were created. You need to replace that reminder with an initial, name, or place to identify your data corpus. So, double click on the change_me_later so it s highlighted and type in your corpus ID. The final obligatory header is for Media and will include the name of the media file followed by a comma, a space, and the type of media (video or cmu01a, cmu01a, audio At this point, you can save this file as a template for future files and you can also give it a filename for the participant you're about to transcribe. Be sure the file has a.cha extension and that it is being saved to the correct folder (e.g., mychat). On other occasions when you are ready to start a new CHAT file, go to File, select Open, and open the template file. Then you can change Names, Pseudonyms or whatever other details need to be changed within the file and save the file with a new filename, but you'll have all the preliminary lines of the transcript in place. OK, now you're ready to continue working on this transcription. You've completed what are called the Obligatory Headers. There are several other headers that can be included such as Constant Headers and Changeable Headers. They are well explained in the CHAT manual and some will be discussed later. However, we strongly urge you to use the following headers consistently in your transcripts: 1) date of testing; and 2) "gem" markings to indicate the start of each of the different tasks within the Important_Event 9

10 @G: PBJ Again, these are entered with a colon and a tab. Final punctuation for these lines is optional. 5.c. Transcribing in Walker Controller Window If you already have the beginning lines (the Obligatory Headers) in your new file, you're ready to begin transcribing. There are multiple ways to approach the transcription process. Walker Controller is like having an audio/video playback system programmed into the computer so you can stop, start, move forward, and backward as needed. In addition, you can set the playback to play a certain segment length and repeat segments automatically. With your CHAT file open, go up to the CLAN menu and click on Windows and then choose Walker Controller. A box will appear on your screen. Click on the button at the top of that box that says Open media. This will open up your computer file directory. Find and select your audio/video file. Before you get started, you may want to make some decisions about the settings on Walker Controller. Walk length determines how long a segment you want to play at a time, so you can set it to play shorter segments or longer segments. You can start with 4000 msec and decide if you want to increase or decrease it. You can make that change at any time. Loop number determines how many times you'd like the segment to be automatically repeated. If you set it for a Walk length of 4000 msec and a Loop number of 2, the audio/video would automatically play a 4000 msec segment at a time and then automatically repeat it before going on to the next 4000 msec segment, repeating it, etc. If you set the Loop number at 1, the segment will play only once. We recommend setting it at 1, but you can experiment and choose what works best for you. Backspace determines how many msec you want the recording to back up before the next new segment plays. We recommend leaving this at 0. 10

11 Walk pause length determines the pause between loops and segments, but only applies to audio not video files. Playback speed is self-explanatory. It can be helpful to slow this down for some speakers. You can change these settings at any time during your transcription. Just click on the setting you want to change, and type in the change you want. Then put your cursor back on your transcript page and left click the mouse to resume your work there. You may find that different Walker Controller settings work better for different kinds of speakers. To transcribe using Walker Controller, use the buttons listed in the box -- F6 makes it play, F5 or F6 makes it stop, F7 makes it rewind to the previous segment, and F9 fast forwards to the next segments. In essence, those buttons are like the controls on a recorder. (Note: If you find that your function keys don't operate correctly, make sure to follow the instructions in Section 2 for Configuring your Computer.) To begin the tape and start transcribing, press F6. Each utterance goes on its own separate line that begins with an asterisk and the speaker ID (the 3 capital letter ID from the Participants line) followed by a colon and a tab. *PAR: mother is washing the dishes. As a shortcut for entering all of this at the start of each line, you can go to the CLAN Menu and click on Tiers, then click on Update. That will automatically assign your first speaker ID (from the Participants line) to the COMMAND 1 button and your second speaker ID to COMMAND 2. So, instead of typing the asterisk, 3 capital letter ID, colon and tab each time you start a new utterance, you can just hit COMMAND 1 or COMMAND 2 and you'll be ready to transcribe that line. This shortcut is only necessary, however, if you are creating a brand new file from scratch (not from a template) or if you changed the Participants tier since the file was opened. Otherwise, the speaker tiers are already set. Capital letters are used only for proper nouns and the word, "I". So, make sure not to use caps at the beginning of utterances. Each transcription line ends with some form of punctuation, usually a period, a question mark, or an exclamation mark. Other symbols may also be used to capture interruptions or incomplete utterances (see Section 8 for explanation and examples). Commas can be used as needed to mark phrasal junctions, but they are not used by the programs and have no tight prosodic definition. Guidelines for 11

12 making decisions about utterance segmentation are given at the end of the final section (Section 8). The only other obligatory part of the transcript is the final line, which with no punctuation afterwards. So, a simple transcript could look PAR holland13a Participant, INV eng H PAR 70;6 female Anomic Participant eng H INV holland13a, cookie_theft *PAR: mother is washing the dishes. *PAR: the children are trying to sneak Make sure to review Section 8 on Tips for Transcribing Aphasic Language and then proceed to Section 6 for instructions on Linking a File Transcribed in Walker Controller Mode and Section 7 for Checking a File. Note: Once you've linked your file to the recording by adding bullets, Walker Controller will work differently than it does when a file is not linked. Once a file is linked, Walker Controller will play only one line at a time when you press F6. For continuous playback in Walker Controller Window once a file is linked, you will need to press ESC-8 (see Mode in menu bar). 5.d. Transcribing in Transcribe (F5) Mode Once you have the Obligatory Headers entered and you are ready to transcribe, the first step will be to open the media file, listen to it, and enter "bullets", which mark the end of each utterance, and link the recording to the transcript. As previously mentioned, guidelines for making decisions about utterance segmentation are discussed in Section 8. To begin, press the F5 button or click on Mode on the CLAN menu bar and select Transcribe Sound or Movie. (Note: If your function keys do not operate as described, make sure to follow the instructions in Section 2 for configuring your computer.) This will bring up your computer directory and ask you to locate the movie file. Click on the movie file that goes with your transcript and then click the Open File button. This will bring the video onto the screen and it will begin playing. 12

13 You can listen for a bit to get comfortable with the exchange. If you do, press F5 again to stop the video and then press F5 again when you're ready to begin entering bullets. To enter bullets, press the space bar every time a speaker reaches the end of an utterance. The program will automatically enter an asterisk, colon, tab, and bullet. It will keep going until you stop it, which you can do by pressing F5 again or clicking on the CLAN Editor screen. You can re-position the cursor at an earlier bullet and re-start the video from that point if you need to revise. When you finish entering bullets, save the file. If the file is long, consider saving regularly as you proceed. You can set the CLAN program to save automatically by going to the menu and clicking on Edit and selecting CLAN Options. Set the Checkpoint every box to a number (e.g., 15) and then CLAN will save your file every so often (approximately every 15 presses of the space bar). You can increase or decrease that number to have it save more or less often. Once you finish entering bullets, you can go back to the first line of the transcript and begin entering text. Just position your cursor anywhere on the first line. Before you start, we recommend going up to the CLAN menu bar and clicking on Tier, Update. This will assign the Speaker IDs to the Command 1 and Command 2 buttons so you don't have to type those in each time. If you place your cursor on the first line with a bullet and press F4 or go to Mode on the CLAN Menu bar and select Play bullet media, the video will play only that line. You can hit Command 1 or Command 2 to enter the speaker ID for that line and then enter the text. Alternately, you can press F5 and the video will play without stopping at each line. You can stop the video by pressing F5 again or clicking the mouse. Then simply re- position the cursor on the line where you want the video to start playing again and press F5. You can continue with either of these processes, saving frequently, until you reach the end of the video. Section 6.b. (Manual Bullet Editing) describes how you can "expand" the bullets to see the actual numbers that connect each line of the transcript with its corresponding location in the video and then manually change them for more precise editing. The following are some general guidelines to remember as you transcribe. Capital letters are used only for proper nouns and the word, "I". So, no caps at the beginning of the utterance. 13

14 Each transcription line ends with some form of punctuation, usually a period, a question mark, or an exclamation mark. Other symbols may also be used to capture interruptions or incomplete utterances (see Section 8). You must with no punctuation afterwards as the final line of the transcript. So, a simple transcript could look PAR holland13a Participant, INV eng H PAR 70;6 female Anomic holland13a Participant eng H INV holland13a, cookie_theft *PAR: mother is washing the dishes. *PAR: the children are trying to sneak Make sure to review the Section 8 on Tips for Transcribing Aphasic Language for more information on ways to capture and code specific types of behaviors and proceed to Section 7 on Checking a File. 6. LINKING A TRANSCRIPT (for transcriptions done with Walker Controller) 6.a. Using the Spacebar Once you've completed the transcript in Walker Controller Window, you need to "link" it to the audio/video file by inserting "bullets" at the ends of each utterance. If you just finished transcribing in Walker Controller Window, close Walker Controller Window and the media file, but keep your saved CHAT file open. If you finished sometime earlier and are returning to work on the file to link it, just open CLAN and go to File, Open, and then find and select your CHAT file. With the CHAT file open, position your cursor on the first line of the transcript. What you are about to do is re-open the media file and begin playing it, but in a different mode. Your task will be to listen to the recording and press the space bar at the end of each utterance. This will input information onto the end of each utterance in the transcript to indicate where that utterance appears in the recording, thus the term "linking". 14

15 When you're ready to begin, press the F5 button. The video will start playing. Pay close attention and be prepared to hit the space bar every time you reach the end of an utterance. After you hit the space bar, you'll see a "bullet" appear at the end of the transcription line. The bullet contains the linking information. The cursor will automatically keep moving to the next line and the recording will continue, so stay vigilant and be prepared to hit the space bar at the end of each utterance. If you want to stop, just click the mouse or press the F5 button again. If you missed hitting the space bar in time or think you made a mistake, you can relink the line. Just reposition the cursor on the last correct bullet and hit the F5 button to start again. The video will start up on the line where your cursor is placed and as you press the spacebar, the new bullets will overwrite the old ones. Once the lines in your transcript are linked you can listen to them in a couple different ways: F4 will play only the sentence where your cursor is located; and ESC-8 will give you continuous play. These functions are all listed under Mode in the menu bar. You can always re-link any lines if needed. Once you complete the process of linking the whole transcript, save it again. 6.b. Manual Bullet Editing Sometimes it is difficult to get the bullets inserted in just the right place with just the right timing. If so, there is a manual way to finesse the bullet editing. The first thing to do is expand the bullets in your file. With your file open, go up to the menu bar, click on Mode and select Expand bullets or simply hit ESC, release it, then hit A. This will make all the details about the media file name and the numbers (which connect the transcript line to the corresponding video) appear on every line of your file. If you need, for example, to make one utterance from two, you can simply look at the numbers at the end of the second line and cut and paste that series into the new sentence you'll be creating. So, if you want to change the following 2 utterances into 1 utterance, first look at the original transcript information. *PAR: yeah _ *PAR: that's okay _

16 You can now edit the transcript by cutting and pasting the "that's okay" part of the second utterance up to follow the "yeah" and then cut and paste the final numbers "253770" to replace the final numbers on the "yeah" line. *PAR: yeah, that's okay _ Remember, with you cursor placed on a line, you can press F4 to hear just that line. Make sure that the bullet includes the dots on both ends and the underscore between the numbers. Cutting and pasting bullets or portions of bullets is often preferable, but if you need to manage some overlapping utterances, you may also find the manual manipulation of the actual numbers to be useful. You can do that by simply typing in a higher or lower number or you can use keyboard buttons to increase and decrease the counter numbers on the movie file as well as in the transcript. The COMMAND-RIGHT ARROW and COMMAND-LEFT ARROW combinations will increase and decrease (respectively) the final number in the bullet; the CONTROL-RIGHT ARROW and CONTROL-LEFT ARROW combination will increase and decrease the first number. You can do that with your cursor on the transcript or on the counter numbers in the movie. 7. CHECKING A TRANSCRIPT The Check program will almost certainly find errors regardless of how carefully you've transcribed and linked. Here are a couple of ways to run this program. The goal is to get the Check Program to report this message: Success! No errors found. 7.a. Using Esc-L You can check your CHAT file by opening your saved CHAT and hitting the ESC key, releasing it, then hitting the L key. (Just make sure the CLAN menu bar is what appears at the top of the window screen [Mac] or that CLAN is the active application [PC] when you try to do this. If it doesn't, just click the cursor anywhere on your open CHAT file.) You can also check your file by going up to the CLAN menu bar and clicking on Mode and then selecting the option Check Opened File. Both of these methods will bring up one error at a time across the bottom of your transcript page. The cursor will go to the error location. You can correct that error and then hit ESC then L again (or go to Mode, Check Opened File) and keep going through your transcript. (You could also do this while you're transcribing if you want to check as you go, but that could be distracting.) As you change things, remember to hit COMMAND-S to save (or go to File, Save on the menu bar). Keep doing the Check process until you get the Success message. 16

17 7.b. Using Commands Window This method of checking your CHAT file allows you to get a list of all the errors in the file at one time. To do this, you need to get the Commands box open. You can go to the menu bar and click on Windows, Commands or you can hit COMMAND-D. Inside the Commands window, make sure the working directory is set to the folder where your file is located. To do so, click on the working button and navigate through your directories until you get to the appropriate folder (e.g., the /CLAN/work folder or mychat on your Desktop). Click Select Folder. Now position your cursor in the dialog box of the Commands window and type the word check, hit the space bar, then type in your file name. (Alternately, after you hit the space bar you will see the FILE IN box appear in the middle of that window. Click on the FILE IN box and another window will appear. Find your CHAT file on the list on the left side, and add to the box on the right side. Make sure you're looking in the right place. Highlight your file and click on Add or double click on your file then click on Done. For PC users, locate your file in the directory where you saved your WORD Unicode text file. Now the cursor will appear back in the Commands window.) Click on the Run button and the Check program will create a list of all your errors. They will appear on your screen in the CLAN Output Window. Starting from the top of the list, look for the lines that start with 3 asterisks and the word File. If you triple click on any of those lines, your CHAT text file will open (if it's not already open) and the line with the error will be highlighted on your text file. This enables you to see the error description and go right to the spot and correct it. Again, once you make changes, save the text file again, and re-run the Check program until you get the Success message. To re-run the Check program, you can repeat the process above or you can simply re-position your cursor in the Commands window box and hit the "up" arrow directional key on your keyboard. You'll see the words appear in the box and you'll see 4 square boxes appear above. Just click on the Run button and the new CLAN Output Window will appear. Make sure your media filename has no spaces in it. The program will identify those spaces as errors on every single utterance line. The filename is actually embedded in the bullet, which can be viewed and expanded by clicking on Mode and selecting Expand bullets (or hit Esc then hit A). 7.c. MOR Check Another useful check for your transcript is to make sure that the MOR program will be able to recognize all the words in the file. MOR will be used to analyze morphological and syntactic categories. If you didn t already download the MOR 17

18 grammar, you can get it all the CHILDES website and follow the instructions in Section 2 Configuring CLAN and Computer. Your transcript file may contain words that are not in the MOR grammar for the following reasons: 1) the word has never been used before in any other transcript; 2) you mis- spelled the word; or 3) the word is being used as a different part of speech. To check the lexicon of your transcript for words that are not recognized in the English MOR grammar, go to CLAN and open the Commands window (type COMMAND-D or go to Windows, and select Commands). In the Commands window dialog box, type mor +xl filename.cha or use FILE IN box as described above (click on the FILE IN box, find your CHAT file on the left side, add it to the box on the right, click Done, click Run). Make sure that the working directory (the one listed next to the word working at the top of the Commands box is the correct one for where your CHAT file is located. If it is not, click on the working button and select the proper directory and folder. Then, back in the Commands window, click on the Run button in the bottom right corner. This will generate a new file that will be placed in the same folder as your CHAT file. It will have the same name but the endings will be.ulx.cex. If you open that file, you will see a list of words not recognized by the program. This can be a good way to fix typos or other kinds of missed errors. 8. TIPS FOR TRANSCRIBING APHASIC LANGUAGE Here are some transcribing tips for some typical aphasic language characteristics. Commas can be used as needed to mark phrasal junctions, but they are not used by the programs and have no tight prosodic definition. Fillers such as "uh" and "um" get typed in as part of the utterance but with an ampersand. Though a list of acceptable spellings for such fillers is in the CHAT manual under Interactive and Communicative Markers, the manual isn t always totally up-to- date. So, a better place to search for appropriate spellings is in the MOR lexicon. *INV: how do you think your language is these days? *PAR: well &uh &uh pretty good. Fragments (phonological) get entered with the ampersand symbol attached at the beginning. So, for all incomplete words, use & followed by the graphemes that capture the sounds produced. *PAR: so now I can &sp speak a little bit. 18

19 *PAR: and then &sh &s &w we came home. Gestures can be captured in several ways. You can compose codes using parts of the body to indicate head nods and shakes, for example, using the ampersand, the equal sign, the body part, colon, and then the movement or its meaning. You can use up to two colons for each gesture code and you can use more than one word after the colon if you connect the words with an underscore symbol. *PAR: &=head:shake. *PAR: &=hand:hello. *PAR: see you later &=ges:wave. *PAR: the woman &=imit:fishing fishing pole water &=casts:pole. You can also use the %fac and %gpx codes for facial or bodily gestures that extend throughout longer periods, including the whole sentence. *PAR: she was fish [/] fish. %gpx: raising her arm up and down Incomplete utterances may occur for a number of reasons and not warrant a period, question mark, or exclamation mark as utterance terminators. Here are some other possibilities, but please refer to the CHAT manual for more explanations and options. If the speaker trails off or fails to complete an utterance, use + as the utterance terminator. *PAR: but &um the story goes on from &um + *PAR: oh gosh. Interruptions by another speaker are coded using +/. (or +/? if a question was interrupted) as the utterance terminator. *INV: now I'm going to show you a picture that +/. *PAR: oh no, not another picture! Interjections, Exclamations, and Interactional Markers are listed in the CHAT manual in section and One table provides standard spellings and meanings for exclamations (e.g., aw -- sympathy, uhoh -- trouble); another provides standard spellings and functions for interjections (e.g., hmm -- thinking, mhm -- yes, whoops -- blunder). Remember, you can access the CHAT manual online at A cautionary note: the CHAT manual is not always up-to-date so the MOR lexicon is a better place to check. If a speaker laughs or sighs, for example, and you want to capture that, you can transcribe it with the ampersand and equal sign. 19

20 *PAR: well &=laughs tell you the truth, I can't say what I said. You can put the laugh or sigh on its own line if it serves as the speaker's turn. *PAR: &=laughs. A list of these Simple Events appears in the CHAT manual and includes cough, groan, sneeze, etc. Neologisms can be marked by putting symbols next to the neologism. *PAR: oh yes, this is a little sakov@n that's all. Overlapping speakers can be handled in several ways. The easiest is to use a lazy overlap marking +< at the beginning of the utterance that overlapped the previous utterance. This indicates that the second utterance overlapped the previous one, but it doesn't indicate exactly which words were overlapped. There are other ways to handle overlaps that you can learn about from the manual as you become more familiar with the program. *PAR: that's about. *INV: +< what about that? Paraphasias can be marked as errors with an asterisk inside square brackets. If you know the intended target word, you can indicate it in square brackets next to the error. If the error is a non- word, you can transcribe it in IPA symbols or you can transcribe it orthographically. If IPA symbols are used, to the end of the error. The CLAN program will use these replacement words when creating the morphological tier. If 2 colons are used, the morphological tier will use the error word and not the replacement word. *PAR: no dubs [: dogs] [*] allowed in the cemetery. *PAR: the pɪnts@u [: prince] [*] wants to know who the slipper fits. Pauses can be captured in the transcription by using a period inside parentheses -- (.) indicates an unfilled pause, (..) indicates a longer pause, and ( ) indicates a very long pause. The CHAT manual explains how to code the exact length of a pause in a section entitled Pauses. Also, if you want to distinguish fluent from disfluent pauses, you can use (.)d for the latter. *PAR: I don't (.) know. *PAR: ( ) what do you ( ) think? If you want to be exact, you can code the length of the pauses and enter the minutes, seconds, and parts of seconds within the parentheses. Minutes precede the colon, 20

21 seconds follow the colon, and parts of seconds are given after the period symbol. The following examples code pauses lasting.5 seconds, 1 minute and seconds, and 2 seconds, respectively. If you are not coding minutes, you do not need the colon at all. Most likely, the final example of 2 seconds illustrates the type of pause coding that would be most relevant. *PAR: I don't (0.5) know. *PAR: (1:13.41) what do you (2.) think? Quoted material is likely to occur during story telling and similar activities. To mark material as quoted, special symbols are used. The +"/. symbols are used at the end of the sentence that precedes the quoted material. The +" symbols are used to begin the next line, which contains a complete clause or sentence of quoted material. *PAR: and so the prince found the slipper and he said +"/. *PAR: +" my gosh I can find the lady who is fitting this slipper. If the quoted material continues for more lines, use +" at the beginning of each quoted line. If the quote precedes the main clause, use +" at the beginning of the quote and then use +"/. at the end of the main clause. *PAR: +" my gosh I can find the lady who is fitting this slipper. *PAR: the prince said +". Repetitions are called Retracing Without Correction. So, if the speaker repeats material within a sentence without changing it at all, the material that is repeated is enclosed in angle brackets (< >) and followed immediately by the square brackets ([/]) with one slash mark enclosed. If only one word has been repeated once, angle brackets are not needed and CLAN will assume that the one word before the square brackets with the slash was repeated. You do not need to use angle brackets or square brackets with the slash mark when fillers (e.g., uh, um) are repeated. *PAR: <it was> [/] it was so bad. *PAR: and the [/] the window was open. *PAR: and she &s spilled <the the the> [/] &uh &uh the water on the floor. You can indicate several repetitions of a single word by using the square brackets and inserting an x, a space, and the number of times the word was repeated. *PAR: it's [x 4] um a dog. Revisions are called Retracing With Correction and occur when the speaker changes something (usually the syntax) of an utterance but maintains the same idea. The material being retraced is enclosed in angle brackets, followed immediately by the 21

22 square brackets with 2 slash marks enclosed. If only one word has been changed, angle brackets are not needed and CLAN will assume that the one word before the square brackets with the slash was revised. A change, or correction, should be something clearly identifiable that changes the syntax but maintains the same idea of the phrase. *PAR: well <Cinderella was a> [//] &uh Cinderella is a nice girl. *PAR: and then sometimes we [//] I was scared about the traffic. Self-interruptions occur when a speaker breaks off an utterance and starts up another. These are coded using +//. (or +//? for a question). *PAR: well then the [//] &uh you know <the the> [/] the airplane that [/] that his +//. *PAR: no the airplane that &uh landed +//. *PAR: no [/] no that's not right. Invited interruptions occur when one speaker prompts the other speaker to complete an utterance. These are coded using the + symbols for trailing off and the ++ symbols for the other speaker's completion. This may be intentional (cuing) or unintentional. *INV: how about ra + *PAR: ++ a radio. *HEL: if Bill had known + *WIN: ++ he would have come. Shortenings occur when a speaker drops sounds out of words. For example, a speaker may leave the final "g" off of "running", saying "runnin" instead. In CHAT transcriptions, this shortened form should appear as runnin(g). Other examples that demonstrate sound omissions are (be)cause, prob(ab)ly, (a)bout, (re)member, (ex)cept. Assimilations include words such as gonna and kinda. Most of these will be recognized by CLAN so no replacements (e.g., [: going to]) are needed. Tables with lists of shortenings and assimilations appear in the CHAT manual in sections and 6.6.8, respectively. The most updated records, however, are always in the MOR lexicon. Unintelligible segments of utterances should be transcribed as xxx. More information about unintelligible material appears in the CHAT manual under Unidentifiable MateriaI. Untranscribed material can be indicated with the letters www. This symbol is used on a main line to indicate material that a transcriber does not want to transcribe because it is not relevant to the interaction of interest. This symbol must be followed by the %exp line, explaining what was transpiring. 22

23 *PAR: www. %exp: talking to spouse *PAR: www. %exp: looking through pictures Utterance segmentation decisions can be challenging. In general, an utterance can be defined as a segment of running speech that appears to form a coherent unit (Saffran et al., 1989). When in doubt, err on the side of creating shorter rather than longer utterances. The following indicators are recommended, with primary weight given to syntax and intonation: 1. Syntax Unless there are strong prosodic counter-indications, a well-formed sentence is considered to be an utterance. However, an utterance may not necessarily be grammatically correct to be considered an utterance. 2. Intonation Falling intonation (or rising intonation in the case of a question) suggests the end of an utterance. 3. Pauses Pauses may not be a reliable guide to utterance boundaries. When pauses occur in what appear to be otherwise well-formed utterances, disregard them. 4. Semantics Semantic criteria cannot be stringently applied in marking utterance boundaries in this population. 9. SUMMARY There is a lot of other important and useful transcription information, but this should serve to get you well underway. As you're transcribing, save often. You can do that by pressing COMMAND S, or going up to the menu bar and selecting File, Save. If you're transcribing in Walker Controller Window or Transcribe (F5) Mode and you set the Checkpoint Every to 15 when configuring the Edit, Options, the file will save automatically on a regular basis. As mentioned earlier, the very last line of the transcript has to with no punctuation after and no additional lines or spaces. *PAR: but I don't like 23

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