File sro-specs.doc.

      - originally drawn from a memo by C. Hemphill of TI (4/18/90).
      - amended 07/91.
      - revised by L. Shriberg (11/10/91).
      - revised by Patti Price (12/09/91),
      - revised 01/21/92.
      - minor revisions made by J. Garofolo on 02/21/92.

Please note: in the transcription data provided in this publication,
no effort has been made to enforce consistency in the prosodic and
non-speech markings as described below.  Such markings are known to be
somewhat subjective, and there may have been some evolutionary changes
in usage over the period of data collection for this corpus.  These
issues, however, do not affect the lexical or referential content of
the transcriptions.


ATIS SR Output (".sro") Transcription Conventions

The transcription is intended to be an orthographic, lexical
transcription with a few details included that represent audible
acoustic events (speech and nonspeech) present in the corresponding
waveform files.  The SRO transcriptions will be automatically mapped
to lexical SNOR conventions for scoring of recognition systems.  The
extra marks contained in the SRO transcription aid in interpreting the
text form of the utterance.  The SRO transcription will be stored in
the query's auxiliary file of type ".sro".  

The transcriptions are intended to be a quick and broad transcription;
transcribers should not have to agonize over decisions, but rather
realize that their transcription is intended to be a rough guide that
others may examine further for details.  Transcriptions should be made
in two passes: one pass in which words are transcribed, and a second
in which the additional details (extraneous noises, and prosodic
marks) are added.  Many phenomena (silences, noises, "uh"s) are easy
to miss unless specifically attended to.  It is recommended that
transcribers have some background in phonetics and in linguistics, or
that their training and preparation for the transcription task cover
some basics in acoustic phonetics and dialect and style variations.


1. Markings Required for Scoring.

1.1 Case

      Transcriptions are case insensitive and all case information
      will be lost in the translation to the all uppercase SNOR
      conventions.  Using all lower case for SRO conventions is
      recommended so that SRO files are immediately recognizable from
      SNOR and lexical SNOR files.

1.2 Spelling

      Normal lexical items will be represented by their spellings in
      the normal way.  NIST maintains a common lexicon of spellings of
      words used in the ATIS corpus.  It is available via remote FTP
      to ssi.ncsl.nist.gov and should be consulted when in doubt on
      spellings of words.  The file is located in the directory,
      "madcow/logs" and is named, "lexicon.doc.DATE", where DATE
      represents the latest date of update of this file.
 
      Spellings which cannot be predicted from .sro conventions:

      - "all right" will always be used in lieu of "alright"

      - "traveling" will always be used in lieu of "travelling"

      - "trans world" will always be transcribed as separate words when
        referring to the airline, TWA.

      - "pan am" will always be transcribed as separate words when referring
       to the airline, Pan American Airlines.

      - "okay" is spelled "okay" rather than any other spellings, and should
	not be in angled or square brackets, unless part of a sequence that is
	verbally deleted.

      - hyphenation is addressed in a separate section below.

1.2.1 Number sequences

      Number sequences (flight numbers, times, dates, aircraft types,
      dollar amounts, etc.) will be spelled out to reflect what was said
      ("flight six one three"; "seven thirty"; "august twenty first";
      "seven forty seven"; "four hundred and ten dollars".)

      Reminder: No hyphens will be used ("seven forty seven", not
      "seven forty-seven".)

      Note:  care should be taken to transcribe the digit "0" as
      "zero" or "oh", depending on what the speaker said.

1.2.2 Letter sequences

      Letter sequences occur in acronyms and abbreviations ("d f w";
      "a p slash eighty"; "p m"; "c o"; etc.)  Letters should be 
      in lower case, separated by a space.  Note that the determiner
      "a" and the letter "a" in "t w a" are not distinguished in
      these conventions.

      Previous conventions indicated an exception to the above rule
      for "washington dc" in which there was no space between the 
      "d" and "c".  This exception never made sense and has not
      been used consistently in practice.  In all future transcriptions
      it should NOT be treated as an exception and should always
      be transcribed as "washington d c".

      [NIST has changed all occurrences of "dc" to "d c" in the MADCOW 
      data they have distributed, so the "dc" form has never been used 
      in official MADCOW data.  It may, however, exist in the ATIS0 data.]

      The AM and PM of times (e.g., "five thirty p m") will be
      treated as examples of letter sequences, i.e.,  lower case
      and separated by a space, with no periods.

      If a speaker pronounces as acronym or abbreviation as a word,
      for example "den" or "bos", then these should be spelled out 
      as words, rather than as "d e n" and "b o s".

1.3 Hyphenation

      Hyphens will not generally be used; if the items on either
      side of a potential hyphen are both words, a space will be used 
      instead of a hyphen.  If one or both of the items is NOT a lexical 
      item, neither a space nor a hyphen will be used, e.g., "nonstop" 
      should be used,	NOT "non-stop" or "non stop"; "round trip" should be 
      used and NOT "round-trip"; "one way" should be used and NOT "one-way"
      or "oneway"; "nonsmoking" should be used and NOT "non-smoking".

1.4 Punctuation

      This transcription will not contain normal English punctuation and
      will consist of lowercase characters except for proper nouns and
      individual letters.  Conventional punctuation, including commas,
      periods, and question marks, will not be used.  Periods will be
      used to indicate silent pauses (see 2.2) within an utterance,
      and should only occur following a space.  Commas are used to 
      indicate intonational separation; exclamation points are used to 
      indicate emphatic stress.  

      Periods, question marks or exclamation points should NOT be used
      to indicate the end of a sentence.

1.5 Mispronunciations

      Obviously mispronounced words that are nevertheless intelligible
      will be marked with stars (e.g, *transportation* for
      ``transportetation'').  These include mispronunciations such
      as words with extra or omitted syllables, but asterisks should not
      be used to indicate pronunciations of words that represent
      normal dialectal (e.g., "warshed" for "washed" or "cah" for "car"
      or stylistic variation (e.g., "bout" for "about" or "wanna" for
      "want a" or for "want to".  If the speaker would not consider
      the pronunciation an error, the asterisk notation should not be
      used.  Obviously, there may be some clear and some unclear cases;
      transcribers should use their best judgment.  A background in
      phonetics is helpful for transcribers.

      Similarly, glottalization at onset or offset of a vowel are not
      transcribed.

1.6 Verbal Deletions

      Words verbally deleted by the subject will be enclosed in angle
      brackets.  Verbal deletion means words spoken by the user but
      which, in the opinion of the transcriber, are superseded by
      subsequent speech explicitly (e.g., "show <flights> <i> <mean>
      fares") or implicitly (e.g., "show me the <fares> flights to Boston".

      Verbal deletions occur any time there is a repetition or restart.
      In repetitions, one or more words are repeated, and there may or
      may not be extra material inserted into the repetition, for example:

         show me <the> <flights> the flights to boston
         show me <the> <flights> the nonstop flights to boston

      In restarts, words are not repeated, but the speaker changes
      direction, as in:

          <show> <me> <the> how many flights go to boston
          
      Note that EACH word in a verbal deletion should be enclosed in
      angle brackets.

1.7 Word Fragments

      Word fragments, i.e. instances in which the speaker did not complete
      a word, will be marked with a hyphen.  As much of the word as is
      audible will be transcribed, followed immediately by the hyphen:

          please show fli- flights from dallas

      Though these represent "verbal deletions" as described above, the
      hyphen occurring before (or after) a space is sufficient to cue
      this fact, and should not be enclosed in angle brackets, as this
      just adds work for the transcribers.  That is, the above example
      should NOT be "please show <fli-> flights from dallas"

      Fragments include cases in which only an initial consonant or vowel
      is heard:

           please show f- flights from dallas

      This may sometimes be a judgement call on the part of the transcriber.
      Within word hesitations may be transcribed as:
	   
	   dall:as (indicating lengthening of the "l") (see section 2.4)
	   dal- [um] -las (indicating a within word interruption - rare)
	   dal- . -as (indicating a silence interrupting a word)
	   
      The transcription will specify the intended word if such
      is obvious to the transcribers and is NOT obvious from context
      (this is of course a judgement call on the part of the transcriber).
      The completion of the presumed intended word will be enclosed in
      parentheses, BEFORE the hyphen, as in:

            please show flights <from> de(nver)- from dallas

1.8 Non-Speech Acoustic Events

      Acoustic events enclosed in square brackets can come from the
      following set:

            -Filled Pause ([uh], [um], [er], [ah], [mm])
            -Speaker other ([laughter], [cough], [grunt], [throat_clear],
		[mumbling], [unintelligible])
            -Nonspeaker other ([phone], [paper_rustle], [door_slam])

      Note that while the exact specification of the type of acoustic
      event is subjective, these events MUST be marked in the correct
      location in a transcribed utterance.  It is often difficult to
      localize these events; transcribing the utterance first, and
      listening for these events in a second pass is the correct
      procedure.

      Note that any term can be used inside the brackets, but there
      should be no spaces inside brackets; use an underscore to connect
      words.

      Note that the the filled pauses represent acoustic events
      similar acoustically and phonetically to speech.  If possible,
      try to limit these to the set on the list, so that those interested
      in these events can find them easily.  If others occur, contact
      the MADCOW committee via your MADCOW representative.

      For noise events that occur over a span of one or more words, 
      the transcriber should:

	- indicate the beginning and ending of the noise, to the nearest word:
		"show the [paper_rustle/] flights to boston [/paper_rustle] or

	- indicate that the sound overlaps one word, e.g. a door slam
	   during the word "flights" could be transcribed either:
		"show the [door_slam>] flights to boston
	  or    "show the flights [<door_slam] to boston

      These guidelines are compatible with those used for the DOT files
      associated with the Wall Street Journal task.  That task specifies
      the following set of non-speech markers, which for compatibility,
      transcribers of .sro files are encouraged to use:

      [chair_squeak]
      [cough]
      [cross_talk]
      [door_slam]
      [grunt]
      [laughter]
      [lip_smack] (use ONLY if EXCEPTIONALLY loud!)
      [loud_breath] (do NOT mark audible but low-level breath noises)
      [paper_rustle]
      [phone_ring]
      [sigh] (only if the amplitude is comparable to surrounding speech)
      [throat_clear]
      [tongue_click] (use ONLY if EXCEPTIONALLY loud!)
      [unintelligible]
      [sniff]
      [tap]
      [noise]

      (The following speech sounds are also transcribed in the CSR and in
       the .sro transcriptions)
      [er]
      [mm]
      [uh]
      [um]

      (The following speech style markers are used in CSR, and considered
       optional in the .sro transcriptions).
      [loud]
      [soft]
      [whisper]

      Note: Acoustic events such as inhalation, exhalation, tongue
            clicks, lip smacks, and breath noise will not be transcribed
            if they are low level and non-intrusive.


2. Markings Helpful for Interpretation.  

These markings should be used when salient; transcribers should not
assume that they are optional.  However, the transcriber should not
agonize over these decisions.  If in doubt, leave it out.  The
transcription is basically at the lexical level, and should be done
relatively quickly.  The following are intended to be helpful markings
that should be used when the phenomena are very clear.

2.1 Intonational Boundaries

      A comma will be used to indicate an intonational separation.
      It is preceded and followed by a space.

            i'd like to fly on delta , first class , july second

      An intonational separation may be achieved by:

	- changing the pitch range, as in parentheticals (typically
	  the parenthetical material is said in a reduced pitch range,
	  i.e, with less pitch variation).

	- by use of boundary tones, i.e., one of the following:

	    	a. a dramatic fall in pitch (for example as when
		concluding a statement, or the answer to a question)
	
		b. a dramatic rise in pitch (for example as when
		concluding a yes-no question)

		c. a continuation rise (as used for example in
		a list of items, e.g., "x , y , and z"

      Boundary tones at the ends of the transcribed complete utterance
      or before a significant silence, as indicated in 2.2 and when
      transcribed, are so often redundant that they need not be transcribed.  
      The use of the comma is intended to disambiguate and to make more
      interpretable utterances that would otherwise be either difficult
      or ambiguous, e.g.,

	- to make more interpretable:
            "show me the flights to boston . what are their fares"
	(if there is a pause between the two sentences), or
            "show me the flights to boston , what are their fares"
	(if there is an intonational indication but no pause)

	    "show me the flights to boston: what are their fares"
	(if there is neither a pause nor intonational marking, but
	there is lengthening)

	    "show me the flights to boston what are their fares" 
	(ONLY if there is no lengthening, pause or intonational
	indication of the separation between the two sentences).

	- to disambiguate:
	    "what are the restrictions for fare codes q , x , and y"
	The above example means something different from:
	    "what are the restrictions for fare codes q  x  and y"

2.2 Silent Pauses

      Silent pauses will be marked with a period (``.'').  The use of
      the period indicates a significant silence, i.e., one that is
      clearly noticeable by listening, and which is significantly
      longer than a silence associated with a stop consonant closure
      for the rate of speech used by the speaker.  Example:

            show me the . flights to boston

      Previous SRO conventions dictated that "." be used for
      a one-second pause, ". ." for a two second pause, etc.
      This is no longer in effect:  a "." may be used to indicate
      a significant duration of silence, without giving further
      information on its duration.  This was hard for transcribers
      to do, was inconsistently applied, and is more appropriately
      done by automatic methods.  Thus in the above example, the
      silence could be 400 ms or one minute, for example.

2.3 Emphatic Stress 

      An exclamation mark (``!'')  before a word or syllable indicates
      emphatic stress.  This includes stress beyond what might normally
      occur based on lexical and syntactic factors.  This is used sparingly
      and subjectively.  Note that the "!" only precedes a word.  Example:

           show me only !delta flights

2.4 Lengthening

      Lengthening, typically vowel lengthening, will be indicated by a
      colon (``:'') placed immediately after the lengthened sound.  This is
      used sparingly and subjectively.  Note that ":" always follows some
      sound; if it occurs within a word, it is not followed by a space.
      Examples:

            show me the: flights to boston
            which flights ha:ve economy fares

      Lengthenings before silences are so often observed that hearing them
      is difficult and would make the transcribers job much more difficult
      than it is intended to be.  They therefore need not be marked before
      the end of the utterance or before a transcribed silence.


3. Truncated Waveforms

3.1 Marking of transcription

      If a .wav file is truncated due to a recording error by the
      system or by the failure of the subject to press/depress the
      push-to-talk button at the proper times, the following notation
      in the corresponding .sro file is to be used:

        -  Beginning of utterance truncation:

                ~ transcription

        -  End of utterance truncation:

                transcription ~

        -  Beginning and end of utterance truncation:

                ~ transcription ~


        -  * Null waveform AND the wizard did not respond with an error
           message to the subject:

                ~~
        * If the wizard responded to a totally truncated utterance with
          an error message, and this "empty" interchange is retained
          in the .log file then the .sro transcription should consist of a
          blank new-line and NOT a "~~".  The utterance will then not
          be annotated as a "trunc-utt".  The purpose of this is to
          distinguish those cases where dialogue coherence has been
          maintained, from those cases where the system may have
          gotten out of sync with what has been recorded in the .wav file.

          However, the transcribers are typically not looking at the
          .log files, and hence do not know what the wizard did.
          Sites that still produce truncate utterances are strongly
          encouraged to correct the data collection mechanism to avoid
          this problem.  In the meantime, transcribers at these sites
          may have to consult the .log files for resolution of some
          instances.

          For cases in which the user pushed the button and then said
          nothing, the corresponding .sro file should be a blank line,
          with no indication of truncation.


4. Speech style.

Speech style is considered a level of detail that need not be included
in the SRO transcriptions.  However, those sites who want to include
it should use the conventions for these markers that are described in
the documentation for the .dot files for the Wall Street Journal task.
(See section 1.8).


5. Autocompletion

Autocompletion files, in conjunction with gnuemacs tools can greatly
increase the transcriber's efficiency.  SRI does this via a file that
can be maintained and updated by the transcriber, and can be obtained
by requesting this software from SRI, via your MADCOW representative.