3.5. CHAT - CHAT Formatted Utterances

3.5.1. Description

Speaker specific utterance transcription reformatted for CHAT’s morphosyntactic analysis

3.5.2. Format

entry              ::=  value+ punctuation
value              ::=  disfluency | word | letter | non_word_sound | untranscribed
disfluency         ::=  "#"
word               ::=  english_word | foreign_word | idiosyncratic_word
english_word       ::=  <Any English word>
foreign_word       ::=  <Any non-English word followed immediately by "@f">
idiosyncratic_word ::=  <Any word unique to child followed immediately by "@">
letter             ::=  <Any Latin letter followed immediately by "@l">
non_word_sound     ::=  "&zzz"
untranscribed      ::=  "&xxx"
punctuation        ::=  "." | "?" | "!" | "+..."

3.5.3. Values

Any canonically spelled series of words or proper nouns, with standard sentence-final punctuation, commas, and the following CHAT-specific markup:

Markup	Meaning	Example
#	Disfluency	bonjour@f
@f	Foreign word	bonjour@f
@l	Letter	a@l
@	Idiosyncratic word	goro@ (goro is child’s word for hedgehog)
&	Non-Word Sound	&um
&xxx	Untranscribed speech	Go wash up directed to sibling
+...	Unfinished sentence	I just want to +... (child trailed off)

3.5.4. Vertical Dependencies

None

3.5.5. Horizontal Dependencies

CHAT is dependent upon the Utts Column for its base content. To convert the transcribed entry in the Utts Column, the following changes are made:

• All disfluencies and repetitions are removed
• All filler words (such as “oh”, “um”, and “uh”) are preceded by an &
• A space is placed between the final word and the punctuation mark
• A few symbols from the Utts column are reformatted in the CHAT column to make the utterances compliant with the CHAT formatting rules according to the following table:

Utts Symbol	CHAT Symbol	Meaning
###	&xxx	Unintelligible speech
-- (mid-sentence)	#	Disfluency or repetition marker
-- (sentence-final)	+...	Speaker did not finish sentence

3.5.6. Depended Upon By

In 2.4. Morpho-Syntactic Analysis Supplement:

Enum, Mor

In 2.5. Erica Cartmill’s Second Tier Gesture Annotation:

Enum, Mor