ISCA Archive ICSLP 1992
ISCA Archive ICSLP 1992

Familiarity with the language transcribed and context as determinants of intratranscriber agreement

Catia Cucchiarini, Renee van Bezooijen

This paper discusses some of the findings obtained in a study on transcription variation. The aim of this study was to determine to what extent segmental transcriptions are influenced by the following factors: familiarity with the language transcribed, context, and speech style. Speech material in which these factors were systematically varied was transcribed by a number of subjects on different occasions. The work presented here concerns the amount of variation observed within transcribers. Mean distance values between transcriptions, which represent the inverse of intratranscriber agreement, were calculated separately for consonants and vowels by means of a transcription alignment algorithm. The data obtained were subsequently submitted to analyses of variance. In discussing the results attention is focussed on the effects of the factors 'familiarity with the language transcribed' and 'context' and the interaction between them.