Compiling a corpus of transcribed speech

1
Compiling a corpus of transcribed speech
2
Anyqs

• A corpus for classroom use in training
  interpreters
• Transcribed spontaneous speech (hard to come by)
• Understandable without detailed contextual
  information (standard format)
• Contemporary
• Quite a lot (currently 1.2M words)
• Easy to encode in TEI and to index with XAIRA

3
No way is this publicly available

• The BBC site contains transcripts of all Any
  Questions programmes in the last 3 years, which
  you can download freely for personal
  non-commercial use.
• But/and you cannot adapt, alter or create a
  derivative work except for your own personal,
  non-commercial use.

4
What the BBCs original looks like

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

5
Marking it up in XML

• In the Header
• Programme details
• Participants and roles
• Setting
• In the Text
• Topic boundaries (new question)
• Utterance boundaries and their speakers
• Sentence boundaries (based on punctuation in
  transcript)
• Non-verbal events (clapping, laughter, coughs)
• Tokenisation - s
• Pos tagging maybe some day
• Alignment with audio maybe some day ???

6
Overall document structure

• ltTEIgt
• ltteiHeadergt
• ltfileDescgt
• lttitleStmtgt
• lttitlegt
• Any questions ltdategt Date lt/dategt
• lt/titlegt
• lt/titleStmtgt
• lt/fileDescgt
• ltprofileDescgt Profile lt/profileDescgt
• lt/teiHeadergt
• lttextgt Text lt/textgt
• lt/TEIgt

7
Profile

• ltprofileDescgt
• ltparticDescgtltlistPersongt
• ltperson whoname sex f m role
• presenter questioner party
  professiongt
• ltparagt fullname lt/paragt
• lt/persongt
• lt/listPersongtlt/particDescgt
• ltsettingDescgt
• ltsettinggt wherefrom lt/settinggt
• lt/settingDescgt
• lt/profileDescgt

8
Text

• lttextgt
• ltdiv typeintrogt
• ltu whoDIMBLEBYgt
• lts n1gtWelcome to London lt/sgt
• lts n13gtAnd Anne McElvoy, executive editor
  and columnist at the Evening Standard. lt/sgt
• ltevent descclapping/gt
• lts n14gtOur first question please.lt/sgt
• lt/ugt
• lt/divgt
• ltdiv typequestiongt
• ltu whoHICKSgt
• lts n15gtTom Hicks. lt/sgt
• lts n16gtShould Ian Blair resign? lt/sgt
• lt/ugt
• lt/divgt
• lt/textgt

9
Things to do with it (1) emphasis

• Agreement (most frequent adverb collocates 1L)
• Agree (773)
• Entirely / actually / rather / completely /
  absolutely / broadly / strongly / totally /
  certainly / quite
• Disagree (110)
• Fundamentally / profoundly / strongly / completely

10
Things to do with it (2) subjunctives in speech

• It were (189)
• As it were (152)
• If it were (30)
• I wish it were (3)

11
Things to do with it (3)As it were

• A particularly Any Questions feature?
  A particularly male one?
• Any Questions
• Male speakers 146 4.1 / 1000 sentences
• Female speakers 6 0.7 / 1000 sentences
• BNC
• Male speakers 291 0.6 / 1000 sentences
• Female speakers 68 0.2 / 1000 sentences

12
Things to do with it (4) Preferred lexis of
patriotism?

• occurrences /1000 ltsgt
• UK
• Lab 40 6
• Con 12 2
• Lib 22 5
• (Ukip 1 7 )
• United Kingdom
• Lab 17 2
• Con 22 3
• Lib 12 3
• (Ukip 0 -)

• occurrences /1000 ltsgt
• Britain
• Lab 94 14
• Con 129 20
• Lib 50 12
• (Ukip 8 58 )

13
Thank you!

• for any answers on how to get permission

14
Utterances / Sentences

• Role
• Lab 2141 / 6845
• Con 1787 / 6309
• Lib 1096 / 4098
• Presenter 7936 / 13318
• Questioner 1180 / 2241
• Other 3144 / 11535

• Sex
• Male 14670 / 35981
• Female 2575 / 8295
• Unknown 39 / 70

Total 17284 / 44346