Question on the repeat symbol

[Sabrina Sun]

Dear all,

   Thanks for your precious time in advance and my question is for the repeat symbol [/]  is it generally used for single words only?  Or could it apply to phrases/sets of words that are said repeatedly in an utterance (like: the boy the boy the boy…)?  If so, how should it be typed to show that this set of words is repeated?  Would it look like:

the boy [/] the boy [/] the boy [/]

also for single repeated words (boy boy boy) is it better to type all in with the [/] following the repeats (boy boy [/] boy [/]) or to just type the word once and indicate it is repeated ([/] or [x3])?

Thanks and looking forward to your comment.

best,

Sabrina 

[Leonid Spektor]

Sabrina,

    To indicate that code in "[...]" refers to more than just one word you need to enclose the phrase in "<...>" brackets. Your example you would look like this:

<the boy> [/] <the boy> [/] <the boy> [/]

You can use single "[/]" code for each repetition or you can use "<the boy> [x3]".

Internally in CLAN the "<the boy> [x3]" is expanded to "<the boy> [/] <the boy> [/] <the boy> [/]", so from CLAN's perspective those two specifications are the same.

Leonid.

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[bwv...@gmail.com]

Hello, 

This question is related to Sabrina's original one. I am a little confused about use of the repetition symbol [/]. It seems that retracing is something different to simply repeating a word - perhaps for emphasis. Is there a way to mark where a speaker repeats a word for emphasis (e.g., run run run!) differently than retracing (e.g., I thought I thought that you wanted to come)? Or does it not matter that the same symbol is used because the point is to remove it from affecting MLU and other calculations?

Many thanks

Vic

[Brian MacWhinney]

Dear Vic,

Yes, you are totally right about the difference between repetition as a disfluency and purposeful repetition for emphasis.  The former is much much more frequent than the latter.  I would not code purposeful repetition using the [/] symbol.  In fact, one could argue that, in your example, each case of “run” is its own one-word utterance and should be coded on a separate line in the transcript. 

In another posting today, you worry about something similar with number enumerations.  This could also apply to picture naming.  Quite reasonably, you are concerned about the ways in which this all could impact MLU calculation.  For that purpose, I think it may make sense to mark all of this one word enumerations and emphasis with the [+ exc] postcode to exclude them from MLU counts.  Fortunately, this stuff is not all that common, so adding this marking is not too onerous.

 

--Brian MacWhinney

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[bwv...@gmail.com]

Dear Brian,

Thank you for the response to my questions. I will mark these instances in the data as you have suggested and exclude them from MLU counts. 

Kind regards

Vic