A way to link self-interruptions and self-completions?

[Figen Karaca]

Dear Chibolts,

CLAN treats the utterances ending with the +/. symbol and starting with +, symbol as a single utterance if the interruption comes from another speaker. I was wondering whether there is a way to link a self-interrupted utterance (marked with +//.) with a subsequent utterance by the same speaker (marked with +,) when there is an intermediate utterance by the same speaker between these two utterances.

More specifically, for instance, in the example below, is there a way to link the first and the third utterance by the same speaker so that CLAN treats them as a single utterance?

*CHI: after a walk in the forest +//.

*CHI: by the way there is a river nearby .

*CHI: +, they went to the riverside .

Best,

Figen

[Brian Macwhinney]

Dear Figen,
Self-interruptions of this type (what Kuteva and Heine call “theticals”) are interesting. However, trying to capture all of this in a transcription system is not going to be easy. Wouldn’t it perhaps be just as good to transcribe this as one long sentence, perhaps with a marker for the thetical, as in:

*CHI: after a walk in the forest <by the way there is a river nearby> [//] they went to the riverside.

If your goal is to exclude the thetical from things like MOR analysis or MLU counting, this would work. Use of the [//] marker here is a bit of a stretch and I guess we could add another type of marker such as [/+] to CHAT to mark theticals.

—Brian MacWhinney

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[Figen Karaca]

Dear Brian, 

Thank you for your swift response and for introducing me to the terminology of theticals! 

You are right, using the retracing symbol [//] would definitely help linking the first and the third utterances together. However, by doing this, I think I cannot achieve my ultimate goal which is to link the first and the third utterances while keeping the second utterance (due to retraced material not being included in the MLU or FREQ calculations, for instance). Perhaps, as you suggested, adding another type of marker to CHAT to mark theticals would help. 

Best, 

Figen