Description of HCRC Maptask Coding Schemes

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Dialogue Moves

There are twelve moves in our coding scheme:

Six initiating moves:

instruct - commands the partner to carry out an action
explain - states information which has not been elicited by the partner
check - requests the partner to confirm information that the checker has some reason to believe, but is not entirely sure about
align - checks the attention or agreement of the partner, or his/her readiness for the next move
query-yn - asks the partner any question which takes a "yes" or "no" answer and does not fall into the previous two categories
query-w - any query which is not covered by the other categories

Five response moves:

acknowledge - a verbal response which minimally shows that the speaker has heard the move to which it responds
reply-y - any reply to any query with a yes-no surface form which means "yes", however that is expressed
reply-n - a reply to a a query with a yes/no surface form which means "no"
reply-w - any reply to any type of query which doesn't simply mean "yes" or "no"
clarify - a repetition of information which the speaker has already stated, often in response to a check move

One pre-initiating move:

ready - a move which occurs after the close of a dialogue game and prepare the conversation for a new game to be initiated

For further details, see the online Dialogue Structure coding manual

Dialogue Games

Conversational game structure reflects the goal structure of the dialogue, and each game is made up of a number of moves. A game may be begun by any of the initiating moves described above. Games may be embedded in one another, but may not overlap.

For further details, see the online Dialogue Structure coding manual and the postscript version of the paper Conversational Games Within Dialogue June 1992

Dialogue Transactions

Transaction coding gives the sub-dialogue structure of complete task-oriented dialogues, with each transaction being built up of several dialogue games and corresponding to one step of the task.

There are four transaction types:

normal - the default option
review - when the speakers return to a part of the route which they have already discussed, and about which they seemed to have reached a conclusion
overview - when a speaker gives an overview of an upcoming section, without expecting the partner to act immediately on the information
irrelevant - when the participants engage in a sub-dialogue which is not part of the task at hand

For further details, see the online Dialogue Structure coding manual and the postscript version of the paper Transaction and action coding March 1995.

Disfluency Coding

For some dialogues, disfluent speech has been identified and coded. The four main categories of disfluency are:

deletion
insertion
repetition
substitution

Other disfluency types are combinations of the types above.

For further details of the coding scheme, see the HCRC disfluency coding manual.

See also some of the publications of Dr. R. Lickley.

Gaze Coding

A video recording was taken of the participants while the task was being carried out, and this was later studied to discover when each participant was looking down at the desk or paper in front of them, and when at the other participant, or the screen in the case of no eye-contact dialogues.

Gaze coding is available for q3e, q3n, q4e, q4n, q7e and q8e.

Part of Speech Tags

The part-of-speech tag set used is a modified version of the Brown Corpus tag set. Further details can be found in this postscript description of the tag set.

MAIN VERBS
VB	VERB BASE FORM
VBD	VERB PAST FINITE FORM eg saw, looked, went
VBG	VERB PRESENT PARTICIPLE (-ing) FORM
VBN	VERB PAST PARTICIPLE eg burnt, gone
VBZ	VERB 3rd PERSON SINGULAR FORM (+s)
NOUNS
NN	COMMON NOUN SINGULAR OR MASS
NNS	COMMON NOUN PLURAL
NP	PROPER NOUN SINGULAR
ADJECTIVES
JJ	ADJECTIVES
JJR	COMPARATIVE ADJECTIVE
JJT	SUPERLATIVE ADJECTIVE with or without -est morphology
ADVERBS
QL	QUALIFIER ADVERB - premodifies adjective or adverbial particles, prepositional adverbs or prepositions
QLDT	QUALIFIER ADVERB - premodifies pronouns or determiners
QLP	enough - when it postmodifies JJ or RB
RB	ADVERB
RBR	COMPARATIVE ADVERBS +ER
WQL	how (as qualifier as in 'how many')
WRB	how, when, whenever, where, whereabout, whereabouts, why
NOT	not
AUX VERBS
TO	to (as verbal particle)
forms of the verb "be"
BE	be
BEM	am, +'m, was
BER	are, +'re, were
BEZ	is, +'s, was
forms of the verb "do"
DO	do, did
DOZ	does, did
forms of the verb" have"
HV	have, +'ve, had
HVZ	has, +'s, had
modal verbs
MD	MODAL +'d, +'ll, can, could, may, might, must, need, ought, shall, should, will, would PLUS negative forms of the above
DETERMINERS
predeterminers (can occur before a CENTRAL DETERMINER)
DPR	all, both, double, half, just, quarter, quite, such
central determiners
AT	ARTICLES: a, an, no, the
DT	SING DEMONSTRATIVE: another, each, that, this
	QUANTIFIERS: any, some, either
	PLUR DEMONSTRATIVE: these, those
PPG	POSSESSIVES: her, his, its, my, our, their, your
WDT	INTERROGATIVE: what, which
post determiners (can appear after a central determiner)
AP	few, further, final, last, least, less, little, many, more, most, much, next, only, other, same, single, very
CD	CARDINAL NUMBERS e.g. one, two, three, etc
OD	ORDINAL NUMBER e.g. first, second, third
GEN	+'s Genitive clitic
PRONOUNS
EX	there (existential subject)
PD	DEMONSTRATIVE: this, that, these, those
WPS	INTERROGATIVE SUBJ: who, what, whatever, which
WPO	INTERROGATIVE OBJ: who, what, whatever, which
PPS	PERSONAL SUBJECT 3RD SING: he, she, it
PPSS	PERSONAL SUBJECT NON-3RD SING: I, we, you, they
PPO	PERSONAL OBJECT: it, us, you, me, him, her, +'s, them
PPL	PERSONAL REFL: herself, himself, itself, myself, yourself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves
PPG2"	PERSONAL POSS: hers, his, mine, mines, ours, theirs, yours
PR	RELATIVE: who, which, that
PN	OTHER PRONOUNS: any, anything, anywhere(pro-pp?) everything, everywhere none, nothing, nowhere, neither some, something, somewhere 'them both', both, all, one
	RECIPROCAL:'each other' occurs twice - treat as a single token enough, ordinal numbers
PREPOSITIONS
IN	PREPOSITIONS (which take NP as complement)
RP	either ADVERBIAL PREPOSITIONS (prepositions which take NO complement) or VERBAL PARTICLES (prepositions which form part of verbs) also included here are some uses of directions e.g. north
CONJUNCTIONS
CC	and, but, either, neither, nor, or, though, yet
CS	'cause, 'til, after, as, because, before, if, like, once, since so, than, that, though, unless, until, whereas, whether, while
INTERJECTIONS
AFF	POSITIVE: right, okay, okey-dokey, mmhmm, uh-huh, yeah, yes, aye, fine, correct, rightee-ho, right-o, mm-mm, uh-uh
	NEUTRAL: now, well
	NEGATIVE: no, nope
What Quirk et. al call reaction signals/initiators
FP	FILLED PAUSE: eh, ehm, er, erm, hmm, mm, uh, um
	INTERJECTION: ah, aha, oh, bang, christ, dear, fine, god, gosh, ha, hell, hurrah, jeez, jesus, my, och, oo, oops, phew, please, say, smashing, sorry, splat, super, ugh, whoa, whoops, why, wow
	now also includes what used to be FW (FOREIGN WORD): alles, culpa, es, fini, finito, gemacht, mea, tu, verstanden
NOI	other NOISEs made by the speaker: &noise, &laugh, &indecipherablespeech
PAU	PAUSE: ...
FRAG	FRAGMENTED WORDS (aborted words)
PUNCTUATION
SENT	TAGGING UNIT SEPARATOR -- NOT IN LEXICON --

Syntax

Information can be found in a postscript document describing the syntactic coding dtd and markup.

Reference Coding

Reference coding has been carried out on all landmarks in the Maptask corpus. For examples of this coding, see the reference time-line on the demo page. For a complete listing of materials used in intelligibility experiments looking at reference change, see intelligibility materials.

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