PhD A: Mmm .
Professor B: So basically Grad H: Or a hundred thirty - two .
Professor B: or a hun Yeah . So , I 'm kinda skeptical , but um I think that PhD A: Mmm .
Professor B: So , uh , I don't think we can share the resource in that way . But what we could do is if there was someone else who 's interested they could have a separate set up which they wouldn't be trying to synch with ours which might be useful for for them .
PhD A: Right , I mean at least they 'd have the data and the transcripts ,
Professor B: And then we can offer up the room ,
PhD A: and Right .
Professor B: Yeah , we can o offer the meetings , and the physical space , and and yeah , the transcripts , and so on .
PhD A: OK . Right , I mean , just it 'd be nice if we have more information on the same data . You know , and Professor B: Yeah .
PhD A: But it 's if it 's impossible or if it 's a lot of effort then you have to just balance the two ,
Professor B: Well I thi
PhD A: so Professor B: yeah , the thing will be , u u in in again , in talking to these other people to see what you know , what what we can do .
PhD A: Right .
Professor B: Uh , we 'll see .
PhD E: Is there an interest in getting video recordings for these meetings ?
Professor B: Right , so we have we PhD E: I mean
Grad H: Yes , absolutely . But it 's exactly the same problem , that you have an infrastructure problem , you have a problem with people not wanting to be video taped , and you have the problem that no one who 's currently involved in the project is really hot to do it .
PhD E: Hmm . So there 's not enough interest to overcome all of Grad H: Mm - hmm .
PhD A: Right . Internally , but I know there is interest from other places that are interested in looking at meeting data and having the video . So it 's just Postdoc G: Yeah , w although I m I I have to u u mention the human subjects problems , that i increase with video .
PhD A: Right , that 's true .
Professor B: Yeah , so it 's , uh , people people getting shy about it .
Postdoc G: Yeah .
Professor B: There 's this human subjects problem . There 's the fact that then um , if i I I 've heard comments about this before , " why don't you just put on a video camera ? " But you know , it 's sort of like saying , " uh , well we 're primarily interested in in some dialogue things , uh , but , uh , why don't we just throw a microphone out there . " I mean , the thing is , once you actually have serious interest in any of these things then you actually have to put a lot of effort in .
PhD E: Mmm .
Professor B: And , uh , you really want to do it right .
Grad H: I know . Yep .
Professor B: So I think NIST or LDC , or somebody like that I think is much better shape to do all that . We there will be other meeting recordings . We won't be the only place doing meeting recordings . We are doing what we 're doing .
Postdoc G: Mm - hmm .
Professor B: And , uh , hopefully it 'll be useful .
Postdoc G: I it it occurred to me , has Don signed a human subject 's form ?
Grad H: Oh ! Probably not .
Postdoc G: A permission form ?
Grad H: Has Don have you s did you si I thought you did actually .
Grad F: I was  Yeah , I was I was here I was here before once .
Grad H: Didn't you read a digit string ?
PhD E: You were here at a meeting before .
Postdoc G: You were here at a meeting before .
PhD E: Yeah .
Grad F: So .
Grad H: Yeah , and you and you signed a form .
Grad F: Oh , I think so .
Postdoc G: Did you sign a form ?
Grad F: Did I ? I don't know .
Grad H: I 'm pretty sure . Well I 'll I 'll get another one before the end of the meeting .
Postdoc G: OK .
Professor B: Yeah .
Grad H: Thank you .
Grad F: Yeah .
Postdoc G: OK .
Professor B: Yeah .
Postdoc G: You don't you don't have to leave for it .
Professor B: Yeah , we we Postdoc G: But I just Grad F: Can I verbally consent ?
Postdoc G: you know .
Grad H: Well I can't , I 'm wired in .
Professor B: We we we we don't , uh PhD A: Yeah . You 're on recor you 're being recorded
Postdoc G: o
Grad F: Yeah .
PhD A: and Professor B: we don't we don't perform electro - shock during these meetings ,
Grad F: I don't care . You can do whatever you want with it .
Professor B: and PhD E: Usually .
Grad F: That 's fine .
Professor B: Yeah . OK . Uh , transcriptions .
Postdoc G: Transcriptions , OK . Um , I thought about there are maybe three aspects of this . So first of all , um , I 've got eight transcribers . Uh , seven of them are linguists . One of them is a graduate student in psychology . Um , Each I gave each of them , uh , their own data set . Two of them have already finished the data sets . And the meetings run , you know , let 's say an hour . Sometimes as man much as an hour and a half .
PhD E: How big is the data set ?
Postdoc G: Oh , it 's what I mean is one meeting .
PhD E: Ah , OK .
Postdoc G: Each each person got their own meeting . I didn't want to have any conflicts of , you know , of of when to stop transcribing this one or So I wanted to keep it clear whose data were whose , and and and so PhD E: Uh - huh .
Postdoc G: And , uh , meetings , you know , I think that they 're they go as long as a almost two hours in some in some cases . So , you know , that means you know , if we 've got two already finished and they 're working on Uh , right now all eight of them have differe uh , uh , additional data sets . That means potentially as many as ten might be finished by the end of the month .
PhD E: Wow .
Postdoc G: Hope so . But the pre - segmentation really helps a huge amount .
PhD C: OK .
Postdoc G: And , uh , also Dan Ellis 's innovation of the , uh the multi - channel to here really helped a r a lot in terms of clearing clearing up h hearings that involve overlaps . But , um , just out of curiosity I asked one of them how long it was taking her , one of these two who has already finished her data set . She said it takes about , uh , sixty minutes transcription for every five minutes of real time . So it 's about twelve to one , which is what we were thinking .
Grad H: or Yep .
Postdoc G: It 's well in the range .
Grad H: It 's pretty good .
Postdoc G: OK . Uh , these still , when they 're finished , um , that means that they 're finished with their pass through . They still need to be edited and all but But it 's word level , speaker change , the things that were mentioned . OK , now I wanted to mention the , um , teleconference I had with , uh , Jonathan Fiscus . We spoke for an hour and a half and , um , had an awful lot of things in common .
Grad H: Hmm .
Postdoc G: He , um , um , he in indicated to me that they 've that he 's been , uh , looking , uh , uh , spending a lot of time with I 'm not quite sure the connection , but spending a lot of time with the ATLAS system . And I guess that I mean , I I need to read up on that . And there 's a web site that has lots of papers . But it looks to me like that 's the name that has developed for the system that Bird and Liberman developed {comment} for the annotated graphs approach .
Grad H: Mm - hmm .
Postdoc G: So what he wants me to do and what we what we will do and uh , is to provide them with the u already transcribed meeting for him to be able to experiment with in this ATLAS System . And they do have some sort of software , at least that 's my impression , related to ATLAS and that he wants to experiment with taking our data and putting them in that format , and see how that works out . I I I explained to him in in detail the , uh , conventions that we 're using here in this in this word level transcript . And , um , you know , I I explained , you know , the reasons that that we were not coding more elaborately and and the focus on reliability . He expressed a lot of interest in reliability . It 's like he 's he 's really up on these things . He 's he 's very Um , independently he asked , " well what about reliability ? " So , he 's interested in the consistency of the encoding and that sort of thing . OK , um PhD A: Sorry , can you explain what the ATLAS I 'm not familiar with this ATLAS system .
Postdoc G: Well , you know , at this point I think Uh , well Adam 's read more in more detail than I have on this . I need to acquaint myself more with it . But , um , there there is a way of viewing Uh , whenever you have coding categories , um , and you 're dealing with uh , a taxonomy , then you can have branches that that have alternative , uh , choices that you could use for each each of them . And it just ends up looking like a graphical representation .
Grad H: Is is Is ATLAS the his annotated transcription graph stuff ? I don't remember the acronym . The the one the what I think you 're referring to , they they have this concept of an an annotated transcription graph representation .
PhD A: Oh . Oh .
Postdoc G: Yeah .
Grad H: And that 's basically what I based the format that I did I based it on their work almost directly , in combination with the TEI stuff . And so it 's very , very similar . And so it 's it 's a data representation and a set of tools for manipulating transcription graphs of various types .
PhD E: Is this the project that 's sort of , uh , between , uh , NIST and and , uh , a couple of other places ?
Postdoc G: Mm - hmm .
PhD E: The the Postdoc G: Including LDC .
PhD E: Yeah ,
Postdoc G: I think so .
Grad H: Yep .
PhD E: y right , OK .
Postdoc G: Mm - hmm . Then there 's their web site that has lots of papers . And I looked through them and they mainly had to do with this , um , this , uh , tree structure , uh , annotated tree diagram thing .
PhD A: Mmm .
Postdoc G: So , um , um and , you know , in terms of like the conventions that I 'm a that I 've adopted , it there there 's no conflict at all .
Grad H: Right .
Postdoc G: And he was , you know , very interested . And , " oh , and how 'd you handle this ? " And I said , " well , you know , this way " and And and we had a really nice conversation . Um , OK , now I also wanted to say in a different a different direction is , Brian Kingsbury . So , um , I corresponded briefly with him . I , uh , c I He still has an account here . I told him he could SSH on and use multi - trans , and have a look at the already done , uh , transcription . And he and he did . And what he said was that , um , what they 'll be providing is will not be as fine grained in terms of the time information . And , um , that 's , uh You know , I need to get back to him and and , uh , you know , explore that a little bit more and see what they 'll be giving us in specific ,
PhD A: Hmm .
PhD E: The p the people Postdoc G: but I just haven't had time yet .
PhD E: The the folks that they 're , uh , subcontracting out the transcription to , are they like court reporters
Postdoc G: Sorry , what ? Yes .
PhD E: or Postdoc G: Apparently Well , I get the sense they 're kind of like that . Like it 's like a pool of of somewhat uh , secretarial I don't think that they 're court reporters . I don't think they have the special keyboards and that and that type of training .
PhD E: Mm - hmm .
Postdoc G: I I get the sense they 're more secretarial . And that , um , uh , what they 're doing is giving them PhD E: Hmm . Like medical transcriptionist type people Grad H: Nu - it 's mostly it 's for their speech recognition products ,
PhD E: But aren't they 're Postdoc G: Yep .
Grad H: that they 've hired these people to do .
PhD E: Oh , so they 're hiring them , they 're coming . It 's not a service they send the tapes out to .
Grad H: Well they they do send it out but my understanding is that that 's all this company does is transcriptions for IBM for their speech product .
PhD E: Ah ! Oh . OK . I gotcha .
Grad H: So most of it 's ViaVoice , people reading their training material for that .
PhD E: I see .
Postdoc G: Mm - hmm .
PhD E: I see .
Postdoc G: Up to now it 's been monologues , uh , as far my understood .
Grad H: Yep , exactly .
Postdoc G: And and what they 're doing is
PhD E: Mm - hmm .
Grad H: Yep .
Postdoc G: Brian himself downloaded So So , um , Adam sent them a CD and Brian himself downloaded uh , cuz , you know , I mean , we wanted to have it so that they were in familiar f terms with what they wanted to do . He downloaded from the CD onto audio tapes . And apparently he did it one channel per audio tape . So each of these people is transcribing from one channel .
Grad H: Right .
PhD E: Oh .
Postdoc G: And then what he 's going to do is check it , a before they go be beyond the first one . Check it and , you know , adjust it , and all that .
PhD E: So each person gets one of these channels Grad H: Right .
Professor B: So if they hear something off in the distance they don't they just go PhD E: OK .
Postdoc G: I I don't know .
Grad H: Well , but that 's OK , because , you know , you 'll do all them and then combine them .
PhD E: But there could be problems , right ? with that .
Postdoc G: I have t I , you know I PhD C: Yep .
Postdoc G: I think it would be difficult to do it that way . I really
PhD A: Yeah .
PhD E: Well if you 're tran if you got that channel right there Postdoc G: d uh , in my case PhD C: Yeah .
Grad H: No , no . We 're talking about close talking , not the not the desktop .
PhD D: No , close talk .
Professor B: Are you ?
Postdoc G: Yes . Well I th I think so .
Grad H: I sure hope so . It 'd be really foolish to do otherwise .
Postdoc G: Yeah , I I would think that it would be kind of hard to come out with Yeah .
PhD A: I I think it 's sort of hard just playing the you know , just having played the individual files . And I I mean , I know you . I know what your voice sounds like . I 'm sort of familiar with PhD C: Yeah .
PhD A: Uh , it 's pretty hard to follow , especially
Grad H: One side .
PhD A: there are a lot of words that are so reduced phonetically that make sense when you know what the person was saying before .
Postdoc G: I agree .
PhD C: Yeah .
PhD E: Yeah , that 's PhD A: Uh , it sort of depends where you are in Postdoc G: And especially since a lot of these PhD D: Yeah .
Grad H: But I mean we had this we 've had this discussion many times .
Postdoc G: Yeah , we have .
Grad H: And the answer is we don't actually know the answer because we haven't tried both ways .
Postdoc G: Well , except I can say that my transcribers use the mixed signal mostly
Grad H: So . Mm - hmm .
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
PhD E: Right .
Postdoc G: unless there 's a huge disparity in terms of the volume on on the mix . In which case , you know , they they wouldn't be able to catch anything except the prominent {comment} channel ,
Grad H: Right .
PhD C: Yeah .
Postdoc G: then they 'll switch between .
Grad H: Well I think that that might change if you wanted really fine time markings .
Postdoc G: But but really Well , OK .
Grad H: So .
Professor B: But they 're not giving f really fine time markings .
Postdoc G: Yeah , well PhD A: Actually , are th so are they giving any time markings ?
Grad H: Right .
PhD A: In other words , if Postdoc G: Well , I have to ask him .
PhD A: Yeah .
Postdoc G: And that 's that 's my email to him . That needs to be forthcoming .
PhD A: Cuz OK .
Postdoc G: But but the , uh I did want to say that it 's hard to follow one channel of a conversation even if you know the people , and if you 're dealing furthermore with highly abstract network concepts you 've never heard of So , you know , one of these people was was transcribing the , uh , networks group talk and she said , " I don't really know what a lot of these abbreviations are , " " but I just put them in parentheses cuz that 's the that 's the convention and I just " Cuz you know , if you don't know Grad H: Oh , I 'd be curious to to look at that .
PhD E: Just out of curiosity , I mean Grad H: They also all have h heavy accents .
PhD C: Yeah .
PhD D: Yeah .
Postdoc G: Yeah .
Grad H: The networks group meetings are all PhD E: Given all of the effort that is going on here in transcribing why do we have I B M doing it ? Why not just do it all ourselves ?
Professor B: Um , it 's historical . I mean , uh , some point ago we thought that uh , it " boy , we 'd really have to ramp up to do that " ,
PhD C: Uh - huh .
PhD D: No , just Professor B: you know , like we just did , and , um , here 's , uh , a a , uh , collaborating institution that 's volunteered to do it .
PhD E: Mm - hmm . Mm - hmm .
Professor B: So , that was a contribution they could make . Uh in terms of time , money , you know ?
PhD E: Mm - hmm .
Professor B: And it still might be a good thing
PhD E: I 'm just wondering now PhD A: Actu yeah , Mar - Mari asked me the same question as sort of Professor B: but PhD E: Well , I 'm I 'm wondering now if it 's Grad H: Well we can talk about more details later .
PhD A: um , you know , yeah , whether to Professor B: Yeah . Yeah . Yeah , so .
PhD E: Hmm .
Professor B: We 'll see . I mean , I think , th you know , they they they 've proceeded along a bit . Let 's see what comes out of it , and and , uh , you know , have some more discussions with them .
Postdoc G: Mm - hmm . It 's very a real benefit having Brian involved because of his knowledge of what the how the data need to be used and so what 's useful to have in the format .
Grad H: Yeah .
Professor B: Mm - hmm . Yeah .
Grad H: So , um , Liz , with with the SRI recognizer , {comment} can it make use of some time marks ?
PhD A: OK , so this is a , um ,
Grad H: I I guess I don't know what that means .
PhD A: and actually I should say this is what Don has b uh , he 's already been really helpful in , uh , chopping up these So so first of all you um , I mean , for the SRI front - end , we really need to chop things up into pieces that are f not too huge . Um , but second of all , uh in general because some of these channels , I 'd say , like , I don't know , at least half of them probably {comment} on average are g are ha are have a lot of cross - ta sorry , some of the segments have a lot of cross - talk . Um , it 's good to get sort of short segments if you 're gonna do recognition , especially forced alignment . So , uh , Don has been taking a first stab actually using Jane 's first the fir the meeting that Jane transcribed which we did have some problems with , and Thilo , uh , I think told me why this was , but that people were switching microphones around {comment} in the very beginning , so the SRI re
PhD C: No , th Yeah . No . They they were not switching them but what they were they were adjusting them ,
PhD A: and they They were not PhD C: so .
Grad F: Mmm .
Grad H: Adjusting . Oh .
PhD A: Yeah .
PhD C: And aft after a minute or so it 's it 's way better .
PhD A: So we have to sort of normalize {comment} the front - end and so forth , and have these small segments .
PhD C: So Yep .
PhD A: So we 've taken that and chopped it into pieces based always on your your , um , cuts that you made on the mixed signal . And so that every every speaker has the same cuts . And if they have speech in it we run it through . And if they don't have speech in it we don't run it through . And we base that knowledge on the transcription .
Grad H: On Just on the marks . Right ?
PhD A: Um , the problem is if we have no time marks , then for forced alignment we actually don't know where you know , in the signal the transcriber heard that word . And so Grad H: Oh , I see ,
PhD A: I mean , if if it 's a whole conversation and we get a long , uh , you know , par paragraph of of talk ,
Grad H: it 's for the length . I see .
PhD A: uh , I don't know how they do this . Um , we actually don't know which piece goes where .
Grad H: I understand .
PhD A: And , um , I think with PhD E: Well you would need to like a forced alignment before you did the chopping , right ?
PhD A: No , we used the fact that So when Jane transcribes them the way she has transcribers doing this , whether it 's with the pre - segmentation or not ,
Grad H: It 's already chunked .
PhD A: they have a chunk and then they transcribes {comment} the words in the chunk . And maybe they choose the chunk or now they use a pre - segmentation and then correct it if necessary . But there 's first a chunk and then a transcription .
Postdoc G: Mm - hmm .
PhD A: Then a chunk , then a transcription . That 's great , cuz the recognizer can Grad H: Uh , it 's all pretty good sized for the recognizer also .
PhD A: Right , and it it helps that it 's made based on sort of heuristics and human ear I think .
Postdoc G: Good . Oh good .
PhD A: Th - but there 's going to be a real problem , uh , even if we chop up based on speech silence these , uh , the transcripts from I B M , we don't actually know where the words were , which segment they belonged to .
Grad H: Right .
PhD A: So that 's sort of what I 'm worried about right now .
PhD E: Why not do a a a forced alignment ?
Grad H: That 's what she 's saying , is that you can't .
PhD A: If you do a forced alignment on something really Grad H: Got uh six sixty minutes of PhD A: well even if you do it on something really long you need to know you can always chop it up but you need to have a reference of which words went with which , uh , chop .
Postdoc G: Now wasn't I thought that one of the proposals was that IBM was going to do an initial forced alignment ,
PhD A: So Postdoc G: after they Grad H: Yeah , but Professor B: I I think that they are ,
Grad H: We 'll have to talk to Brian .
Professor B: um , yeah , I 'm sure they will and so we we have to have a dialogue with them about it .
PhD A: Yeah .
Professor B: I mean , it sounds like Liz has some concerns
PhD A: Maybe they have some you know , maybe actually there is some , even if they 're not fine grained , maybe the transcribers Professor B: and PhD A: uh , I don't know , maybe it 's saved out in pieces or or something . That would help .
Postdoc G: Yeah .
PhD A: But , uh , it 's just an unknown right now .
Postdoc G: Yeah . I I need to to write to him .
PhD A: So .
Postdoc G: I just you know , it 's like I got over - taxed with the timing .
PhD A: Right . But the it is true that the segments I haven't tried the segments that Thilo gave you but the segments that in your first meeting are great .
Postdoc G: Mm - hmm .
PhD A: I mean , that 's that 's a good length .
Postdoc G: A good size . Good .
PhD A: Right , cuz Postdoc G: Well , I I was thinking it would be fun to to uh , uh , if if you wouldn't mind , {comment} to give us a pre - segmentation .
PhD A: y yeah .
PhD C: Yeah .
Postdoc G: Uh , maybe you have one already of that first m of the meeting that uh , the first transcribed meeting , the one that I transcribed .
PhD C: Um , I 'm sure I have some
Postdoc G: Do you have a could you generate a pre - segmentation ?
Grad H: February sixteenth I think .
PhD C: but but that 's the one where we 're , um , trai training on , so that 's a little bit Grad H: Oh .
Postdoc G: Oh , I see .
PhD C: It 's a little bit at odd to Postdoc G: Oh , darn . Of course , of course , of course . Yeah , OK .
PhD C: Yeah .
PhD A: And actually as you get transcripts just , um , for new meetings , {comment} um , we can try Postdoc G: Uh - huh .
PhD A: I mean , the the more data we have to try the the alignments on , um , the better . So it 'd be good for just to know as transcriptions are coming through the pipeline from the transcribers , just to sort of we 're playing around with sort of uh , parameters f on the recognizer ,
Postdoc G: Mm - hmm .
PhD A: cuz that would be helpful . Especially as you get , en more voices .
Postdoc G: Excellent , good .
PhD A: The first meeting had I think just four people ,
PhD C: Four speakers , yeah .
Postdoc G: Mm - hmm .
PhD A: yeah .
Postdoc G: Yeah , Liz and I spoke d w at some length on Tuesday and and I and I was planning to do just a a preliminary look over of the two that are finished and then give them to you .
PhD A: Oh , great , great .
Postdoc G: Yeah .
PhD A: So .
Professor B: That 's great . I guess the other thing , I I can't remember if we discussed this in the meeting but , uh , I know you and I talked about this a little bit , there was an issue of , uh , suppose we get in the , uh , I guess it 's enviable position although maybe it 's just saying where the weak link is in the chain , uh , where we we , uh uh , we have all the data transcribed and we have these transcribers and we were we 're the we 're still a bit slow on feeding at that point we 've caught up and the the the , uh , the weak link is is recording meetings . OK , um , two questions come , is you know what how how do we uh , it 's not really a problem at the moment cuz we haven't reached that point but how do we step out the recorded meetings ? And the other one is , um , uh , is there some good use that we can make of the transcribers to do other things ? So , um , I I can't remember how much we talked about this in this meeting but there was Grad H: We had spoken with them about it .
Postdoc G: And there is one use that that also we discussed which was when , uh , Dave finishes the and maybe it 's already finished the the modification to multi - trans which will allow fine grained encoding of overlaps . Uh , then it would be very these people would be very good to shift over to finer grain encoding of overlaps . It 's just a matter of , you know , providing So if right now you have two overlapping segments in the same time bin , well with with the improvement in the database in in the , uh , sorry , in the interface , it 'd be possible to , um , you know , just do a click and drag thing , and get the uh , the specific place of each of those , the time tag associated with the beginning and end of of each segment .
Professor B: Right , so I think we talking about three level three things .
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Professor B: One one was uh , we had s had some discussion in the past about some very high level labelings ,
Postdoc G: Yeah . The types of overlaps Professor B: types of overlaps , and so forth that that someone could do . Second was , uh , somewhat lower level
Postdoc G: Mm - hmm .
Professor B: just doing these more precise timings . And the third one is is , uh , just a completely wild hair brained idea that I have which is that , um , if , uh if we have time and people are able to do it , to take some subset of the data and do some very fine grained analysis of the speech . For instance , uh , marking in some overlapping potentially overlapping fashion , uh , the value of , uh , ar articulatory features .
Postdoc G: Yeah .
Professor B: You know , just sort of say , OK , it 's voiced from here to here , there 's it 's nasal from here to here , and so forth . Um , as opposed to doing phonetic uh , you know , phonemic and the phonetic analysis ,
Grad H :
Professor B: and , uh , assuming , uh , articulatory feature values for those those things . Um , obviously that 's extremely time - consuming . Uh PhD E: That would be really valuable I think .
Professor B: but , uh , we could do it on some small subset .
Postdoc G: Also if you 're dealing with consonants that would be easier than vowels , wouldn't it ? I mean , I would think that that , uh , being able to code that there 's a a fricative extending from here to here would be a lot easier than classifying precisely which vowel that was .
Grad H: Which one .
PhD A: Mmm .
Professor B: Mm - hmm .
Postdoc G: I think vowels vowels are I think harder .
Professor B: Well , yeah ,
PhD C: Yeah .
Professor B: but I think also it 's just the issue that that when you look at the u w u u when you look at Switchboard for instance very close up there are places where whether it 's a consonant or a vowel you still have trouble calling it a particular phone
Postdoc G: Mm - hmm .
Professor B: at that point
Postdoc G: Mm - hmm , OK .
Grad H: Yeah , but but just saying what the Professor B: because it 's you know , there 's this movement from here to here
Postdoc G: Yeah , I 'm sure . Uh , yeah , I I know .
PhD A: Right .
Professor B: and and and it 's so I
PhD E: You 're saying r sort of remove the high level constraints and go bottom - up .
Professor B: Yeah , describe describe it .
PhD E: Then just say Grad H: Yep , just features .
PhD A: Mmm .
Professor B: Now I 'm suggesting articulatory features . Maybe there 's there 's even a better way to do it but it but but that 's , you know , sort of a traditional way of describing these things ,
PhD E: Mm - hmm .
Professor B: um , and uh , I mean , actually this might be a g neat thing to talk to Postdoc G: That 's nice .
PhD E: Acoustic features versus psychological categories .
Professor B: Sort of . I mean , it 's still PhD E: Yeah .
Postdoc G: Yeah .
Professor B: some sort of categories but but something that allows for overlapping change of these things and then this would give some more ground work for people who were building statistical models that allowed for overlapping changes , different timing changes as opposed to just " click , you 're now in this state , which corresponds to this speech sound " and so on .
PhD E: Mm - hmm . Mm - hmm .
PhD A: So this is like gestural uh , these g
Professor B: Yeah , something like that .
PhD A: Right . OK .
Professor B: I mean , actually if we get into that it might be good to , uh , uh , haul John Ohala into this
PhD A: Right .
Professor B: and ask his his views on it I think .
Grad H: Yeah .
PhD A: But is is the goal there to have this on meeting data ,
Postdoc G: Excellent .
PhD A: like so that you can do far field studies {comment} of those gestures or um , or is it because you think there 's a different kind of actual production in meetings {comment} that people use ? Or ?
Professor B: No , I think I think it 's for for for that purpose I 'm just viewing meetings as being a a neat way to get people talking naturally . And then you have i and then and then it 's natural in all senses ,
PhD E: Just a source of data ?
PhD A: I see .
Professor B: in the sense that you have microphones that are at a distance that you know , one might have , and you have the close mikes , and you have people talking naturally . And the overlap is just indicative of the fact that people are talking naturally ,
PhD A: Uh - huh .
PhD D: Yeah .
PhD A: Right .
Professor B: right ? So so I think that given that it 's that kind of corpus ,
PhD D: Yeah .
Professor B: if it 's gonna be a very useful corpus um , if you say w OK , we 've limited the use by some of our , uh , uh , censored choices , we don't have the video , we don't and so forth , but there 's a lot of use that we could make of it by expanding the annotation choices .
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Professor B: And , uh , most of the things we 've talked about have been fairly high level , and being kind of a bottom - up person I thought maybe we 'd , do some of the others .
Grad H: Hmm .
PhD A: Right . Yeah , that would be good .
Postdoc G: It 's a nice balance .
Professor B: Yeah .
Postdoc G: That would be really nice to offer those things with that wide range .
PhD A: Right .
Professor B: Yeah and hopefully someone would make use of it .
Postdoc G: Really nice .
Professor B: I mean , people didn't Postdoc G: Yeah .
Professor B: uh , I mean , people have made a lot of use of of TIMIT and , uh w due to its markings , and then the Switchboard transcription thing , well I think has been very useful for a lot of people .
Grad H: Right .
PhD A: That 's true .
Professor B: So PhD A: I guess I wanted to , um , sort of make a pitch for trying to collect more meetings .
Postdoc G: Cool .
PhD A: Um ,
Professor B: Yeah .
PhD A: I actually I talked to Chuck Fillmore and I think they 've what , vehemently said no before but this time he wasn't vehement and he said you know , " well , Liz , come to the meeting tomorrow
Professor B: Yeah .
PhD A: and try to convince people " . So I 'm gonna try . Go to their meeting tomorrow and see if we can try , uh , to convince them
Postdoc G: Mm - hmm . Good .
Professor B: Cuz they have something like three or four different meetings ,
PhD A: because they have And they have very interesting meetings from the point of view of a very different type of of talk than we have here
Professor B: right ?
Postdoc G: Mm - hmm .
PhD D: Talk PhD A: and definitely than the front end meeting , probably . Um PhD E: You mean in terms of the topic topics ?
PhD A: Well , yes and in terms of the the fact that they 're describing abstract things and , uh , just dialogue - wise ,
Professor B: Mm - hmm .
PhD A: right .
PhD E: Mm - hmm .
PhD A: Um , so I 'll try . And then the other thing is , I don't know if this is at all useful , but I asked Lila if I can maybe go around and talk to the different departments in this building to see if there 's any groups that , for a free lunch ,
Professor B: Yes .
PhD A: if we can still offer that , might be willing Professor B: Great .
Grad H: You mean non - ICSI ?
PhD A: non - ICSI , non - academic ,
Grad H: Yeah , I guess you you can try
PhD A: you know , like government people ,
Grad H: but PhD A: I don't know .
Grad H: The problem is so much of their stuff is confidential .
PhD A: So .
PhD D: Yeah .
Postdoc G: Yeah .
Grad H: It would be very hard for them .
PhD A: Is is it in these departments ?
PhD D: Yeah .
Postdoc G: Also it does seem like it takes us way out of the demographic . I mean , it seems like we we had this idea before of having like linguistics students brought down for free lunches
Grad H: Well , tha I think that 's her point .
Postdoc G: and that 's a nice idea .
PhD A: Right , and then we could also we might try advertising again because I think it 'd be good if if we can get a few different sort of non - internal types of meetings
Postdoc G: Yeah .
Professor B: Yeah .
PhD A: and just also more data . So .
PhD E: Does does John Ohala have weekly phonetics lab meetings ?
Postdoc G: Mm - hmm .
Grad H: And I think , uh , if we could get PhD A: So I actually wrote to him and he answered , " great , that sounds really interesting " . But I never heard back because we didn't actually advertise openly . We a I mean w I told I d asked him privately . Um , and it is a little bit of a trek for campus folks .
Postdoc G: Mm - hmm .
Grad H: Yeah . You might give them a free lunch .
PhD A: Um , so it 's still worthwhile .
Grad H: But , um , it would be nice if we got someone other than me who knew how to set it up and could do the recording
PhD A: So Grad H: so u I didn't have to do it each time .
PhD A: Exactly , and and Postdoc G: Yeah . That 's right .
PhD A: and I was thinking Professor B: He - he 's supposed he 's supposed to be trained to do it .
PhD A: Yeah . Plus we could also get you know , a s a student .
Grad H: OK , next week you 're going to do it all .
PhD D: Yeah .
PhD A: And I 'm willing to try to learn . I mean , I 'm I would do my best . Um , the other thing is that there was a number of things at the transcription side that , um , transcribers can do , like dialogue act tagging ,
Grad H: It 's not that hard .
PhD A: disfluency tagging , um , things that are in the speech that are actually something we 're y {comment} working on for language modeling . And Mari 's also interested in it , Andreas as well . So if you wanna process a utterance and the first thing they say is , " well " , and that " well " is coded as some kind of interrupt u tag . Uh , and things like that , um , th
Postdoc G: Of course some of that can be li done lexically .
PhD A: A lot of it can be done Postdoc G: And I also they are doing disfluency tagging to some degree already .
PhD A: Great . So a a lot of this kind of Postdoc G: Yeah .
PhD A: I think there 's a second pass and I don't really know what would exist in it . But there 's definitely a second pass worth doing to maybe encode some kinds of , you know , is it a question or not ,
Postdoc G: Mm - hmm .
PhD A: or um , that maybe these transcribers could do . So Yeah .
Postdoc G: They 'd be really good . They 're they 're very they 're very consistent .
PhD A: That 'd be great .
Professor B: Mm - hmm .
Postdoc G: Uh , I wanted to whi while we 're Uh , so , to return just briefly to this question of more meeting data , um I have two questions . One of them is , um , Jerry Feldman 's group , they they , uh , are they I know that they recorded one meeting . Are they willing ?
Professor B: I think they 're open to it . I think , you know , all these things are PhD A: Oh , yeah .
Professor B: I think there 's we should go beyond , uh , ICSI but , I mean , there 's a lot of stuff happening at ICSI that we 're not getting now that we could .
PhD A: Oh , that we could .
Professor B: So it 's just Postdoc G: Mm - hmm .
PhD A: OK . I thought that all these people had sort of said " no " twice already .
Professor B: Yeah . So the PhD A: If that 's not the case then Professor B: No , no . No . So th there was the thing in Fillmore 's group but even there he hadn't What he 'd said " no " to was for the main meeting . But they have several smaller meetings a week ,
Grad H: So .
Professor B: and , uh , the notion was raised before that that could happen . And it just , you know it just didn't come together
PhD A: Just OK .
PhD E: Well , and and the other thing too is when they originally said " no " they didn't know about this post - editing capability thing .
Professor B: but PhD A: Right .
Postdoc G: Oh .
Professor B: Yeah . Yeah .
PhD A: Right . That was a big fear .
PhD E: So .
Postdoc G: That 's important .
Professor B: Yeah , so I mean there 's possibilities there . I think Jerry 's group , yes .
PhD A: OK .
Professor B: Uh , there 's there 's , uh , the networks group , uh , I don't Do they still meeting regularly or ?
Grad H: Well , I don't know if they meet regularly or not but they are no longer recording .
Professor B: But I mean , ha ha have they said they don't want to anymore or ?
Grad H: Um , ugh , what was his name ?
Professor B: Uh , i i
Postdoc G: Joe Sokol ?
Grad H: Yeah .
Professor B: Yeah .
Grad H: When with him gone , it sorta trickled off .
Professor B: OK , so they 're down to three or four people
Grad H: They and they stopped Yeah .
PhD A: Mm - hmm .
Professor B: but the thing is three or four people is OK .
Grad H: Yep .
Postdoc G: We might be able to get the administration Grad H: Well he was sort of my contact , so I just need to find out who 's running it now .
Professor B: OK .
Grad H: So .
Postdoc G: I see that Lila has a luncheon meeting in here periodically .
PhD A: Yeah , I mean , it One thing that would be nice
Postdoc G: I don't know PhD A: and this it sounds bizarre but , I 'd really like to look at to get some meetings where there 's a little bit of heated discussion , like ar arguments and or emotion , and things like that . And so I was thinking if there 's any like Berkeley political groups or something . I mean , that 'd be perfect . Some group , " yes , we must "
Grad H: Who 's willing to get recorded and distributed ?
PhD A: Well , you know , something PhD C: Yeah .
Grad F: Yeah , I don't think the more political argumentative ones would be willing to PhD A: Um Professor B: Yeah , with with with potential use from the defense department .
PhD D: Yeah .
PhD A: Well , OK .
Professor B: Yeah .
PhD A: No , but maybe stu student , uh , groups or , um , film - makers , or som Something a little bit colorful .
PhD C: Yeah .
Grad F: Yeah . Exactly .
Postdoc G: Yeah .
Grad H: Yeah .
PhD D: Yeah .
Professor B: Yeah .    Yeah , th there 's a problem there in terms of , uh , the um commercial value of of st uh ,
Postdoc G: Yeah , of course there is this problem though , that if we give them the chance to excise later we e might end up with like five minutes out of a f {comment} of m one hour
PhD D: Film - maker .
Grad H: Of beeps ,
PhD C: Yeah . Yeah .
Grad H: yeah .
PhD A: And I don't mean that they 're angry
PhD D: Is Postdoc G: of {comment} Yes . Really .
PhD A: but just something with some more variation in prosodic contours and so forth would be neat . So if anyone has ideas , I 'm willing to do the leg work to go try to talk to people but I don't really know which groups are worth pursuing .
Postdoc G: Well there was this K P F A
Grad H: No that 's Postdoc G: but OK .
Grad H: Legal .
Postdoc G: OK , OK .
Professor B: it it it it turned out to be a bit of a problem .
PhD A: Or Postdoc G: And I had one other one other aspect of this which is , um , uh , uh , Jonathan Fiscus expressed primar uh y a major interest in having meetings which were all English speakers . Now he wasn't trying to shape us in terms of what we gather
Professor B: Mm - hmm .
Postdoc G: but that 's what he wanted me to show him . So I 'm giving him our , um our initial meeting because he asked for all English . And I think we don't have a lot of all English meetings right now .
Professor B: Of all all nat all native speakers .
PhD E: Did he mean , uh did he mean and non - British ?
Grad H: Well PhD C: The all native .
Postdoc G: That 's what I mean , yeah .
Grad H: Well if he meant and non - British I think we have zero .
Postdoc G: He doesn't care . No . Eh , well , British is OK .
PhD E: He said British was OK ?
Postdoc G: But but Sure , sure , sure .
Professor B: Why ?
Grad H: British is English ?
PhD C :
Postdoc G: Yeah . Different varieties of English .
PhD C: Ooo , ooo .
Professor B: Well , I don't I don't I don't think if he didn't say that Postdoc G: Native speaking . Native speaking English .
Grad H: I bet he meant native speaking American .
Postdoc G: Yes .
Professor B: I bet he did .
PhD C: American English ?
Postdoc G: Oh , really .
Grad H: So , why would he care ?
PhD E: Knowing the application PhD A: That 's Professor B: I remember wh I I remember a study PhD A: I was thinking , knowing the , uh , n National Institute of Standards , it is all Professor B: I remember a study that BBN did where they trained on this was in Wall Street Journal days or something , they trained on American English and then they tested on , uh , different native speakers from different areas . And , uh , uh , the worst match was people whose native tongue was Mandarin Chinese . The second worst was British English .
Postdoc G: That 's funny .
Professor B: So h it 's , you know , t
Postdoc G: Alright . And so that would make sense .
Professor B: the the the German was much better ,
PhD C: Ooo , ooo .
Postdoc G: I didn't have the context of that .
Professor B: it was Swiss w Yeah , so it 's so I think , you know , if he 's if he 's thinking in terms of recognition kind of technology I I I think he would probably want , uh American English ,
Postdoc G: All America , OK .
Grad H: I wonder if we have any .
Professor B: yeah . It it yeah , unless we 're gonna train with a whole bunch of Postdoc G: I think that the Feldman 's meetings tend to be more that way , aren't they ? I mean , I sort of feel like they have Professor B: I think so ,
Grad H: Maybe .
PhD A: Yeah ,
Professor B: yeah .
Grad H: Maybe .
PhD A: mm - hmm .
Professor B: Yeah .
PhD D: Mmm .
Grad H: And maybe there are a few of with us where it was Professor B: Yeah .
Grad H: you know , Dan wasn't there and before Jose started coming ,
Professor B: Yeah .
PhD D: Yeah .
Grad H: and Professor B: It 's pretty tough , uh , this group . Yeah .
Grad H: Yeah .
PhD C: Mmm .
Professor B: So , uh , what about what about people who involved in some artistic endeavor ?
PhD D: Yeah .
Professor B: I mean , film - making or something like that .
PhD A: Exactly , that 's what I was Professor B: You 'd think like they would be PhD D: A film - maker .
PhD A: something where there there is actually discussion where there 's no right or wrong answer but but it 's a matter of opinion kind of thing . Uh , anyway , if you if you have ideas Postdoc G: It 's be fun .
Grad H: RASTA . PLP . RASTA . PLP .
PhD D: Yes .
Grad F: We can just discu we can just have a political discussion one day .
PhD A: Yeah , we could PhD E: A any department that calls itself science
PhD D: Department .
Grad F: Uh , I could make that pretty PhD D: Yeah .
Grad H: Well , like computer science .
PhD D: Computer sci
Grad H: That Postdoc G: We could get Julia Child . I know .
PhD A: I 'm I 'm actually serious
Grad H: That 's PhD A: because , uh , you know , we have the set up here
Grad H: Got a ticket .
Professor B: Yeah , I know you are .
PhD A: and and that that has a chance to give us some very interesting fun data . So if anyone has ideas ,
PhD D: Yeah .
PhD A: if you know any groups that are m you know ,
Professor B: Yeah .
PhD D: Yeah .
Grad H: Well I had asked some some of the students at the business school .
PhD A: student groups c like clubs , things like that .
Grad F: I know Grad H: I could PhD A: Not not Professor B: Put a little ad up saying , " come here and argue " .
PhD A: Yeah . " If you 're really angry at someone use our conference room . "
Grad H: The Business school . Uh , the business school might be good . I actually spoke with some students up there
PhD A: Oh , OK .
Grad H: and they they they expressed willingness back when they thought they would be doing more stuff with speech .
PhD A: Really .
Grad H: But when they lost interest in speech they also stopped answering my email about other stuff , so .
PhD D: Hmm .
PhD A: Or people who are really h
Professor B: They could have a discussion about te
Grad F: I Grad H: We should probably bleep that out .
Professor B: about about tax cuts or something .
Grad F: I heard that at Cal Tech they have a special room someone said that they had a special room to get all your frustrations out that you can go to and like throw things and break things .
Professor B: Yeah , now that is not actually what we Grad F: So we can like post a Grad H: Th - that 's not what we want .
Grad F: No , not to that extent
PhD A: Well , far field mikes can pick up where they threw stuff on the wall .
Grad F: but , um . Yeah .
Professor B: Yeah , but we don't want them to throw the far field mikes is the thing .
PhD A: Oh . Yeah , right .