--- title: "Issues in the Transcription of English Conversational Grunts (2000)" description: "He then builds a \"regularized\" ASCII orthography: familiar spellings are kept, but each letter is given a… 9 references, cited by 2 papers here." authors: ["Nigel Ward"] year: 2000 venue: "1st SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue" source: "https://aclanthology.org/W00-1004/" doi: "10.3115/1117736.1117740" licence: "CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (ACL Anthology, before 2016)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/ward-2000-issues-transcription-english-conversational-grunts/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/ward-2000-issues-transcription-english-conversational-grunts/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2000](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2000/) / Issues in the Transcription of English Conversational Grunts # Issues in the Transcription of English Conversational Grunts **Authors:** [Nigel Ward](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/nigel-ward/) · **Year:** 2000 · **Venue:** [1st SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/sigdial/) ([SIGDIAL 2000](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/sigdial/2000/)) · **Publisher:** [Association for Computational Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/association-for-computational-linguistics/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (ACL Anthology, before 2016)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) **Links:** [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/W00-1004/) · [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/W00-1004.pdf) · [DOI 10.3115/1117736.1117740](https://doi.org/10.3115/1117736.1117740) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2085787384) **Citations:** 8 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14) · 2 in our library, of the 149,439 papers whose bibliographies we read ## Summary Short non-lexical sounds such as uh-huh, um, mm and oh turn up constantly in spoken English, yet no transcription convention captures them both reliably and usefully. Ward reviews three existing traditions. The first uses fully general phonetic notations (Trager, Poyatos), which are too heavy for everyday work. The second is function-driven corpus labeling (the Switchboard standard, Lander), which forces each sound into a fixed category such as filler or yes/no. The third is naive comic-book spelling, which is ambiguous. He then builds a "regularized" ASCII orthography: familiar spellings are kept, but each letter is given a defined phonetic value, and annotations are added for creaky voice and pitch. On his own conversation corpus of 317 grunts, the scheme handles about 97% of tokens. It still needs fallbacks into ordinary spelling, IPA or ad hoc tags. The work matters because these sounds signal attitude (enthusiasm, reluctance, boredom) and turn-taking, which affects dialogue systems, transcription and learners of English. ## Key points - Frequency: in the author's American English data, a grunt occurs about once every 5 seconds. In 79 Switchboard conversations, um ranked 6th among all items, and uh, uh-huh, um and um-hum together accounted for 4% of tokens. - Function-based schemes fail for two reasons: the same sound appears in several roles (backchannel, filler, response, etc.), and the inventory is large and open-ended. Only 1% of corpus grunts were negative, so a yes/no top-level split is poorly motivated. - Letter values in the scheme: - h marks breathiness, but a single syllable-final h is silent. - n marks nasalization. - u marks schwa. - uu marks a creaky schwa. - tsk marks an alveolar click. - A hyphen marks a strong syllable break. - A repeated letter marks length or several weakly separated syllables. - Annotations follow a colon. :cr1–:cr3 marks degrees of creakiness. Pitch anchors use a 1–5 scale; for example, uh-huh:32-34 is the polite backchannel. - Coverage was 306/317 (≈97%) of grunts. The scheme has not been tested with other labelers, and inter-annotator agreement has not been measured. ## Interesting ideas - Transcribe the form compositionally (breathiness, nasality, boundary, pitch) and leave the function to context, instead of baking a fixed meaning into the label. - Since a single grunt can be a backchannel, a filler, an answer or a confirmation, its discourse role should be decided from its position in the exchange, not looked up from the token. - Start from a notation that people already half-know and tighten its ambiguous parts, rather than inventing a new expert notation. This keeps the scheme learnable without training. - Report explicit coverage of the inventory, with sanctioned escape hatches for leftovers, plus tie-breaking rules of thumb for borderline items (e.g. exclude laughter, include anything possibly communicative). - The author flags that cross-labeler agreement must be measured before a scheme is trusted. ## For Mova How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests: - **I1** (tokens): Interjection tokens like uh-huh or mm-hm could carry decomposed feature attributes rather than one opaque lemma, so later stages can reason about what the sound signals. - **I2** (frames): The speech-act layer could classify grunts in dialogue (assent, continuation, hesitation, bid for the turn) from neighbouring turns and keep that decision explainable. - **I3** (back): When generating dialogue text, Mova could map attitude frames (reluctant, enthusiastic) onto a small, consistent set of grunt spellings instead of arbitrary ones. - **I4** (learn): Annotation guidelines for silver data could state coverage rates and fallback categories openly, so that disagreements on rare cases are traceable rather than hidden. - **I5** (learn): Any new tag set Mova introduces should be checked by agreement between independent witnesses before it is used as training signal. *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* ## Institutions - [The University of Tokyo](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/the-university-of-tokyo/) — University, Tokyo, Japan · 90 works · 9,156 citations 📚 Shelves (4): [🎭 Arts and Humanities](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/) · 16,039 works · [🗣️ Language and Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/language-and-linguistics/) · 15,891 works · [💭 Psychology](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/psychology/) · 1,552 works · [💭 Experimental and Cognitive Psychology](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/psychology/experimental-and-cognitive-psychology/) · 870 works 🧭 Topics (2): [English](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/english/) · 2,263 works · [🗨️ Dialogue systems](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/dialogue-systems/) · 624 works ## Cite Cite as: Nigel Ward. 2000. Issues in the Transcription of English Conversational Grunts. 1st SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue. The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @inproceedings{ward2000issues, title = {{Issues in the Transcription of English Conversational Grunts}}, author = {Nigel Ward}, booktitle = {1st SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue}, year = {2000}, doi = {10.3115/1117736.1117740}, url = {https://doi.org/10.3115/1117736.1117740} } ``` - [← previous An interlingua aiming at communication on the Web: How language-independent can it be?](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/martins-2000-interlingua-aiming-communication-web-how/) - [next → Semantic Tagging for the Penn Treebank](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/palmer-2000-semantic-tagging-penn-treebank/) - [↑ back to papers of 2000](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2000/) ## References 9 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. W. J. Barry and A. 3. Fourcin. 1992. Levels of labeling. Computer Speech and Language, pages 1-14. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=W%2E+J%2E+Barry+and+A%2E+3%2E+Fourcin%2E+1992%2E+Levels+of+labeling%2E+Computer+Speech+and+Language%2C+pages+1%2D14%2E) 2. J. Hamaker, Y. Zeng, and J. Picone. 1998. Rules and guidelines for transcription and segmentation of the switchboard large vocabulary conversational speech recognition corpus, version 7.1. Technical report, Institute for Signal and Information Processing, Mississippi State University. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=J%2E+Hamaker%2C+Y%2E+Zeng%2C+and+J%2E+Picone%2E+1998%2E+Rules+and+guidelines+for+transcription+and+segmentation+of+the+switchboard+large+vocabulary+conversational+speech+recognition+corpus%2C+version+7%2E1%2E+Technical+r) 3. Inn Hutchby and Robin Wooflltt. 1999. Conversation Analysis. Blackwell. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Inn+Hutchby+and+Robin+Wooflltt%2E+1999%2E+Conversation+Analysis%2E+Blackwell%2E) 4. Roman Jakobson and Linda Waugh. 1979. The Sound Shape of Language. Indiana University Press. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Roman+Jakobson+and+Linda+Waugh%2E+1979%2E+The+Sound+Shape+of+Language%2E+Indiana+University+Press%2E) 5. T. Lander. 1996. The CSLU labeling guide. Technical Report CSLU-014--96, Center for Spoken Language Understanding, Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=T%2E+Lander%2E+1996%2E+The+CSLU+labeling+guide%2E+Technical+Report+CSLU%2D014%2D%2D96%2C+Center+for+Spoken+Language+Understanding%2C+Oregon+Graduate+Institute+of+Science+and+Technology%2E) 6. Fernando Poyatos. 1975. Cross-cultural study of paralingulstic "alternants" in face-to-face interaction. In Adam Kendon, Richard M. Harris, and Mary tL Key, editors, Organization of Behavior in Face-to-Face Interaction, pages 285-- 314. Mouton. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Fernando+Poyatos%2E+1975%2E+Cross%2Dcultural+study+of+paralingulstic+%22alternants%22+in+face%2Dto%2Dface+interaction%2E+In+Adam+Kendon%2C+Richard+M%2E+Harris%2C+and+Mary+tL+Key%2C+editors%2C+Organization+of+Behavior+in+Face%2Dt) 7. George L. Trager. 1958. Paralanguage: A first approximation. Studies in Linguistics, pages 1-12. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=George+L%2E+Trager%2E+1958%2E+Paralanguage%3A+A+first+approximation%2E+Studies+in+Linguistics%2C+pages+1%2D12%2E) 8. Nigel Ward. 1998. The relationship between sound and me~nlng in Japanese back-channel grunts. In Proceedings of the ~th Annual Meeting of the (Japanese) Association for Natural Language Processing, pages 464-467. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Nigel+Ward%2E+1998%2E+The+relationship+between+sound+and+me%7Enlng+in+Japanese+back%2Dchannel+grunts%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+%7Eth+Annual+Meeting+of+the+%28Japanese%29+Association+for+Natural+Language+Processing%2C+pa) 9. Nigel Ward. 2000. The challenge of non-lexical speech sounds. In International Conference on Spoken Language Processing. to appear. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Nigel+Ward%2E+2000%2E+The+challenge+of+non%2Dlexical+speech+sounds%2E+In+International+Conference+on+Spoken+Language+Processing%2E+to+appear%2E) *Updated 29 October 2026*