CA Form Summary

CA Form Summary

To maintain CA format, CA-CLAN uses these functions:

Utterances and inter-TCU pauses are numbered by the automatic line numbering function.
Line numbers can be turned on and off for viewing and printing by using CLAN options
After the line number comes an asterisk and then the speaker ID code and a colon and a tab.
Tabs are not used elsewhere.
Overlaps are aligned automatically by the program, so hand indentation is not needed
To maintain proper alignment, CLAN uses the FixedSyn font

Fields that extend CA include:

@Begin and @End. Using these guarantees that the file is complete.
@Comment: This is a useful general purpose field
@Bg, @Eg: These mark "gems" for later retrieval
@Participants: This field identifies the speakers.
%ges: dependent tiers such as %ges, %spa can be added as needed.

Here is a summary of CA symbols, as derived from Appendix 1 to Atkinson, J., & Heritage, J. (Eds.). (1984). Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press. This table includes recent clarifications provided by Charles Goodwin, Tim Koschmann, and Curtis LeBaron.

Function	CA	Description	CHAT Form
Overlap	[ text ] [ text ]	Left bracket marks the beginning of temporal overlap among utterances produced by two or more speakers. Right bracket marks the end. These must always be paired and stacked one over the other.	Four special Unicode bracket markers with automatic alignment through INDENT
Quick uptake	≈word	A wavy equal sign before a word that is not at the beginning of a turn indicates no break in an ongoing piece of talk where one might otherwise expect it.	≈word
Latching	text≈ ≈text	Indicates the 'latching' that occurs when the next speaker starts early. It is marked at the end of the first speaker and the beginning of the second.	CHAT marks the the second component only with +, within speaker and ++ between speakers
Timed pause	(1.8)	Measured in seconds, this symbol represents intervals of silence occurring within (i.e. pauses) and between (i.e. gaps) speakers' utterances. These are placed on their own separate line.	#1_8
Micropause	(.)	A timed pause of less than 0.2 seconds that is also placed on its own separate line.	#
Continuation	,	Indicates a continuing intonation with slight upward or downward contour that may or may not occur at the end of a turn constructional unit (TCU) as in the enunciation of an item in a not yet completed list.	,
Conclusion	.	Indicates a falling pitch or intonational contour at the conclusion of a TCU.	.
Question	?	Rising vocal pitch or intonational contour at the conclusion of a TCU.	?
Emphasis	!	Marks the conclusion of a TCU delivered with emphatic and animated tone.	!
Halt	-	An abrupt (glottal) halt. This may occur at the end of a word or before the word is completed.	This codes three functions marked by retracing, trailing off, and glottal in CHAT
Lengthening	:	One or more colons indicate sustained enunciation of a vowel or consonant. The more the colons, the longer the stretch up to a maximum of five.	:
Initial shift up	↑	Shift to high pitch.	↑word
Initial shift down	↓	Shift to low pitch.	↓word
Final rise	¿	Rising but not to top.	word¿
Final fall	;	Falling but not to bottom.	word;
Faster	> text <	Speech delivered faster than surrounding material.	↗text↗
Slower	< text >	Speech delivered slower than surrounding material.	↘text↘
Softer	°text°	Speech produced more softly than surrounding talk.	°text°
Louder	CAPS	Speech delivered more loudly than surrounding talk.	√text√
Stress	text	Underscoring indicates stress on a word, syllable, or sound.	text
Laugh, breath	hhh	Audible expulsion of breath (linguistic aspiration) as in laughter, sighing, etc. When aspiration occurs within a word, it is set off with parentheses (but parens are not included in Jefferson's Nixon transcripts).	hhh
Inhalation	.hhh	Audible inhalation is marked with a preceding dot.	∙hhh
Unclear	(text)	Text enclosed in parentheses represents transcribed talk for which doubt exists.	[?]
Untranscribed	( )	Empty parentheses represent untranscribed talk or unknown speaker. The talk may be untranscribed because the transcriber cannot get what was said.	xxx and www
Comments	(( ))	Comments and annotations of any type, including descriptions and asides, with the text in italics.	[% comment] or &=comment
Possible talk	(0)	There may or may not be talk in the designated area.	zzz
High pitch	-	High pitch throughout.	▔text▔
Low pitch	-	Low pitch throughout.	▁text▁
Smile voice	£	Smile voice.	£text£
Creaky voice	* text *	Material delivered in a creaky voice. In the Jefferson Nixon transcripts, asterisks following consonants are used to mark hardening.	* text *
Unrecognizable	xxx	Unrecognizable material.	xxx
Rarer Symbols:
Laugh pulse	¢	Pulse of laughter.	¢
Plosiveness	(h)	Plosiveness associated with laughter, crying, breathlessness, etc.	not used
Umlaut	för	Used in the Jefferson Nixon transcripts. In this example, shows that the word "for" was pronounced as "for" and not "fer". Also used by Jefferson as a hardener or softener on vowels.	not yet used
Gutturalness	wghord	Gutturalness.	not used

You may also want to read descriptions of these and other codes from Gail Jefferson. The examples that Gail uses to illustrate these codes are taken from the Nixon Watergate TalkBank transcripts that she is creating.