Introducing English Linguistics

Table 4.1. Select annotation used for spoken texts in the International
Corpus of English (ICE) (adapted from Nelson 2002)
<$A>, <$B>, etc.
Speaker IDs: mark the beginning of a speaker turn
<#>
Text unit: delineates the beginning of a meaningful
unit of language (see utterance)
 . . . 
Untranscribed text: encloses extralinguistic informa-
tion (e.g. a speaker clearing his/her throat)
 . . . 
Uncertain transcription: transcriber is uncertain
about what speaker said
<.> . . . 
Incomplete word: speaker utters only part of a word
<[> . . . 
Overlapping string: start and end of entire sequence
of overlapping speech
<{> . . . 
Overlapping string set: start and end of each speaker’s