PhD G: I mean it 's I I think overall you could get everything to work by accessing the same waveform and trying to find two you know , the begin and end times . Um , but I think it 's more efficient , if we have the storage space , to have the small ones .
Grad D: and , it 's no problem , right ?
PhD G: Yeah , it 's Grad D: Because it 's not backed up .
PhD G: Yeah .
Grad D: So we just PhD G: It 's it 's just Grad D: If we don't have a spare disk sitting around we go out and we buy ourselves an eighty gigabyte drive and make it all scratch space . You know , it 's not a big deal .
Postdoc E: You 're right about the backup being a bottleneck .
PhD G: Right .
Postdoc E: It 's good to think towards scratch .
PhD G: Yeah , so these wouldn't be backed up , the Postdoc E: Yeah .
Professor F: Yep .
PhD G: Right .
Grad D: So remind me afterward
PhD G: And Grad D: and I 'll and we 'll look at your disk and see where to put stuff .
Grad C: OK . Alright . I mean , I could just u do a DU on it right ? And just see which how much is on each So .
Grad D: Yep . Each partition . And you wanna use , either XA or scratch .
Grad C: OK .
Grad D: Well X question mark , anything starting with X is scratch .
Grad C: OK .
Postdoc E: With two two digits .
Grad D: Two digits , right , XA , XB , XC . OK ?
Professor F: So , @ @ .
Grad D: Jane ?
Postdoc E: OK . So I got a little print - out here . So three on this side , three on this side . And I stapled them . OK . Alright so , first of all , um , there was a an interest in the transcribe transcription , uh , checking procedures and  and I can tell you first , uh , to go through the steps although you 've probably seen them . Um , as you might imagine , when you 're dealing with , um , r really c a fair number of words , and uh , @ @ {comment} natural speech which means s self - repairs and all these other factors , that there 're lots of things to be , um , s standardized and streamlined and checked on . And , um , so , I did a bunch of checks , and the first thing I did was obviously a spell - check . And at that point I discovered certain things like , um , " accommodate " with one " M " , that kind of thing . And then , in addition to that , I did an exhaustive listing of the forms in the data file , which included n detecting things like f faulty punctuation and things PhD B: I 'm I 'm sorry to interrupt
Postdoc E: Yeah ?
PhD B: you could could I just back up a little bit
Postdoc E: Sure , please ,
PhD B: and Postdoc E: yeah , please , please .
PhD B: So you 're doing these So the whole process is that the transcribers get the conversation
Postdoc E: Yeah , yeah , yeah .
PhD B: and they do their pass over it .
Postdoc E: Yes .
PhD B: And then when they 're finished with it , it comes to you ,
Postdoc E: That 's right .
PhD B: and you begin these sanit these quality checks .
Postdoc E: Exactly . I do these checks .
PhD B: OK .
Postdoc E: Uh - huh .
PhD B: OK .
Postdoc E: Exactly . Yeah . Thank you . And so , uh , I do a an exhaustive listing of the forms Actually , I will go through this in in order , so if if we could maybe wait and stick keep that for a second cuz we 're not ready for that .
Grad D: So on the fifth page , seven down Postdoc E: Yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah . Exactly ! Exactly ! Alright so , a spelling check first then an exhaustive listing of the , uh all the forms in the data with the punctuation attached and at that point I pick up things like , oh , you know , word followed by two commas . And th and then another check involves , uh , being sure that every utterance has an identifiable speaker . And if not , then that gets checked . Then there 's this issue of glossing s w so - called " spoken - forms " . So there mo for the most part , we 're keeping it standard wo word level transcription . But there 's w And that that 's done with the assumption that pronunciation variants can be handled . So for things like " and " , the fact that someone doesn't say the " D " , uh that 's not important enough to capture in the transcription because a a good pronunciation , uh , you know , model would be able to handle that . However , things like " cuz " where you 're lacking an entire very prominent first syllable , and furthermore , it 's a form that 's specific to spoken language , those are r reasons f for those reasons I I kept that separate , and used the convention of using " CUZ " for that form , however , glossing it so that it 's possible with the script to plug in the full orthographic form for that one , and a couple of others , not many . So " wanna " is another one , " going " uh , " gonna " is another one , with just the assumption , again , that this th these are things which it 's not really fair to a c consider expect that a pronunciation model , to handle . And Chuck , you in you indicated that " cuz " is is one of those that 's handled in a different way also , didn't you ? Did I PhD B: I don't remember .
Postdoc E: OK . So so it might not have been  It might not have been you ,
PhD B: Hmm .
Postdoc E: but someone told me that in fact " cuz " is treated differently in , um , i u in this context because of that r reason that , um , it 's a little bit farther than a pronunciation variant . OK , so after that , let 's see ,
PhD B: So that was part of the spell - check , {comment} or was that that was after the spell - check ?
Postdoc E: um . Well so when I get the exhau So the spell - check picks up those words because they 're not in the dictionary .
PhD B: Uh - huh .
Postdoc E: So it gets " cuz " and " wanna " and that Grad D: And then you gloss them ?
Postdoc E: Yeah , mm - hmm . Run it through I have a sed You know , so I do sed script saying whenever you see " gonna " you know , " convert it to gonna " , you know , " gloss equals quote going - to quote " , you know . And with all these things being in curly brackets
Grad D: Mm - hmm .
Postdoc E: so they 're always distinctive . OK , I also wrote a script which will , um , retrieve anything in curly brackets , or anything which I 've classified as an acronym , and a pronounced acronym . And the way I tag ac pronounced acronyms is that I have underscores between the components . So if it 's " ACL " then it 's " A " underscore " C " underscore " L " .
Grad D: And so so your list here , are these ones that actually occurred in the meetings ?
Postdoc E: And the th Yes . Uh - huh , yeah .
Grad D: Whew !
Postdoc E: OK , so now . Uh and a
Grad D: We are acronym - loaded .
PhD G: Um , can I ask a question about the glossing , uh before we go on ?
Postdoc E: Yeah .
PhD G: So , for a word like " because " is it that it 's always predictably " because " ? I mean , is " CUZ " always meaning " because " ?
Postdoc E: Yes , but not the reverse . So sometimes people will say " because " in the meeting , and if if they actually said " because " , then it 's written as " because " with no w " cuz " doesn't even figure into the equation .
Professor F: But but in our meetings people don't say " hey cuz how you doing ? "
PhD G: Beca - because Right . {comment} Right .
Grad D: Except right there .
Postdoc E: Yeah .
Professor F: Yeah .
PhD G: Um , so , I guess So , from the point of view of Postdoc E: That 's a good point .
PhD G: The the only problem is that with for the recognition we we map it to " because " ,
Grad D: Well ,
PhD G: and so if we know that " CUZ " Postdoc E: That 's fine .
Grad D: but they have the gloss .
Postdoc E: Well Don has a script .
Grad C: Yeah .
PhD G: but , we don't Grad D: You have the gloss form so you always replace it .
Postdoc E: Exactly .
Grad D: If that 's how what you wanna do .
Postdoc E: Uh - huh . And Don knows this ,
Grad C: Yeah .
Postdoc E: and he 's bee he has a glo he has a script that Grad C: I replace the " cuz " with " because " if it 's glossed .
PhD G: S Right . But , if it 's OK .
Grad C: And PhD G: But then there are other glosses that we don't replace , right ? Because Postdoc E: Yes . And that 's why there 're different tags on the glosses ,
PhD G: OK . So , then it 's fine .
Postdoc E: on the different on the different types of comments , which we 'll which we 'll see in just a second .
Grad C: Right .
PhD G: OK .
Postdoc E: So the pronounceable acronyms get underscores , the things in curly brackets are viewed as comments . There 're comments of four types . So this is a good time to introduce that . The four types . w And maybe we 'll expand that
Grad D: Um Postdoc E: but the but the comments are , um , of four types mainly right now . One of them is , um , the gloss type we just mentioned .
Grad D: Can ca
Postdoc E: Another type is , um Grad D: So a are we done with acronyms ? Cuz I had a question on what what this meant .
Postdoc E: I 'm still doing the overview . I haven't actually gotten here yet .
Grad D: Oh I 'm sorry .
Postdoc E: OK so , gloss is things like replacing the full form u with the , um , more abbreviated one to the left . Uh , then you have if it 's uh , there 're a couple different types of elements that can happen that aren't really properly words , and wo some of them are laughs and breathes , so we have uh that 's prepended with a v a tag of " VOC " .
PhD A: Whew !
Postdoc E: And the non - vocal ones are like door - slams and tappings , and that 's prepended with a no non - vocalization .
PhD B: So then it just an ending curly brace there , or is there something else in there .
Postdoc E: Oh yeah , so i e this would Grad D: A comment , basically .
Postdoc E: Let 's just take one example .
PhD B: Oh , oh , oh .
Postdoc E: And then the no non - vocalization would be something like a door - slam . They always end . So it 's like they 're paired curly brackets . And then the third type right now , uh , is m things that fall in the category of comments about what 's happening . So it could be something like , you know , " referring to so - and - so " , " talking about such - and - such " , uh , you know , " looking at so - and - so " .
PhD B: So on the m
Postdoc E: Yeah .
PhD B: on the middle t So , in the first case that gloss applies to the word to the left . But in the middle two Th - it 's not applying to anything , right ?
Postdoc E: Yeah , and this gets substituted here .
Grad D: They 're impulsive .
PhD B: OK .
Postdoc E: Huh - uh . No , they 're events .
PhD B: OK .
Grad D: Well the " QUAL " can be The " QUAL " is applying to the left .
Postdoc E: They 're actually They have the status of events .
PhD B: Right , I just meant the middle two ones , yeah .
Grad D: Yep .
Postdoc E: Well , and actually , um , it is true that , with respect to " laugh " , there 's another one which is " while laughing " ,
Grad D: " While laughing " .
Postdoc E: and that is , uh , i i An argument could be made for this tur turning that into a qualitative statement because it 's talking about the thing that preceded it , but at present we haven't been , um , uh , coding the exact scope of laughing , you know , and so to have " while laughing " , you know that it happened somewhere in there which could well mean that it occurred separately and following , or , you know , including some of the utterances to the left . Haven't been awfully precise about that , but I have here , now we 're about to get to the to this now , I have frequencies . So you 'll see how often these different things occur . But , um , uh , the very front page deals with this , uh , final c pa uh , uh , aspect of the standardization which has to do with the spoken forms like " mm - hmm " and " mm - hmm " and " ha " and " uh - uh " and all these different types . And , um , uh , someone pointed out to me , this might have been Chuck , {comment} about , um about how a recognizer , if it 's looking for " mm - hmmm " with three M 's , and it 's transcribed with two M 's , that it might uh , that it might increase the error rate which is which would really be a shame because um , I p I personally w would not be able to make a claim that those are dr dramatically different items . So , right now I 've standardized across all the existing data with these spoken forms .
Grad D: Oh good .
Postdoc E: I I should say
Grad D: So it 's a small list .
Postdoc E: all existing data except thirty minutes which got found today . So , I 'm gonna  I 'm gonna  I 'm gonna check Grad D: That that 's known as " found data " .
Postdoc E: Yeah , yeah . Acsu - actually yeah . I got It was stored in a place I didn't expect ,
Grad C: It 's like the z Zapruder Film .
Postdoc E: so and and um , w we , uh , sh yea reconstructed how that happened .
Professor F: I wanna work with lost data .
Grad D: Yeah . It 's much easier .
Postdoc E: And this is this 'll be great . So I 'll I 'll be able to get through that tonight , and then everyth i well , actually later today probably .
Grad D: Hmm .
Postdoc E: And so then we 'll have everything following these conventions . But you notice it 's really rather a small set of these kinds of things .
Grad D: Yeah .
Postdoc E: And I made it so that these are , um , with a couple exceptions but , things that you wouldn't find in the spell - checker so that they 'll show up really easily . And , um Grad C: Jane , can I ask you a question ? What 's that very last one correspond to ?
Postdoc E: Sure .
Grad C: I don't even know how to pronounce that .
Postdoc E: Well , yeah . Now that that s only occurs once ,
PhD G: Yeah .
Postdoc E: and I 'm thinking of changing that .
PhD G: Right .
Grad C: Uh , is that like someone 's like burning or some such thing ?
Postdoc E: So - c I haven't listened to it so I don't know .
Grad C: Like their hair 's on fire ?
Postdoc E: I haven't heard it actually . I n I need to listen to that one .
Grad D: Ah !
PhD A: It 's the Castle of Ah !
PhD G: Actually we we gave this to our pronunciation person ,
Grad C: Uh , it looks like that .
PhD G: she 's like , " I don't know what that is either " . So .
Postdoc E: Did she hear the th did she actually hear it ? Cuz I haven't heard it .
PhD G: No , we just gave her a list of words that , you know , weren't in our dictionary and so of course it picked up stuff like this , and she just didn't listen so she didn't know . We just we 're waiting on that just to do the alignments .
Postdoc E: Yeah . Yeah I 'm curious to se hear what it is , but I didn't know wanna change it to something else until I knew .
Grad C: Right .
PhD G: Maybe it 's " argh " ?