Data Structure

The translation of the multiple layers of annotation of Switchboard into Nite XML format allows us to describe the relationships between these layers of annotation as part of the data structure itself. NXT tools can then be used to search over the corpus to extract text with varied discourse, syntactic, prosodic and phonetic features. Here we briefly describe how the corpus data is structured in NXT. See the NXT documentation for more details, and here for a brief guide to using NXT tools to search the corpus and the XML coding itself. Before beginning, it is important for users to be aware of the relationship between the two versions of the transcript used in the corpus.

Two Versions of the Transcript

At the time the project was started, there were two major transcripts of the Switchboard corpus: the original Switchboard/Penn Treebank release, which did not have word timing information; and the corrected MS-State transcript, which included time alignments at the word level. The Penn Treebank transcript already had substantial levels of annotation attached to it, while the MS-State version was obviously necessary to produce phonetic and prosodic annotation. A substantial part of the effort in this project was therefore spent in aligning the two transcripts.

This effort has been reasonably successful. However, it is not possible to integrate the two transcripts completely while preserving the accuracy of all the annotations attached to them. For example, if the correction of a mis-transcribed word changes its part-of-speech, this evidently affects the syntactic structure above it. Further, in some cases, such as contractions, the same word is represented as one element in one transcript, and two in the other, e.g. doesn't below. Therefore, it was decided to maintain the two transcripts separately in the corpus, and represent the relationship between them in the data structure, as follows:
The Penn Treebank transcript is contained in the 'terminals' codings, i.e. primarily 'word' elements (see explanation below). The MS-State transcript is contained in the 'phonwords' codings, i.e. primarily 'phonword' elements. 'word' elements have a 'phon' pointer to the 'phonword' element that they get their timing from. Where there is a one-to-one mapping between the representation of the same word in each transcript, e.g. the, there is simply one 'word' element pointing at the equivalent 'phonword' element. However, where the representation of the same word in the two transcripts is different, e.g. doesn't, this mapping may be many-to-one or one-to-many, as shown above. Users need to make careful note of this when constructing queries involving words. In the corpus structure diagram below, elements shown above the 'word' level are attached to 'words' (nts, markables, etc.). Elements below 'word's are in fact attached to 'phonword's (syllables, accents, etc.). Links shown in the structure below with a red star between these elements and 'word's are actually shorthand: there is a direct relationship between these elements and 'phonwords', and a pointer between 'word's and 'phonword's. This needs to be described in the query syntax, e.g. if you want both part-of-speech and syllable information for the structures above, the query would be (see further on the Getting Started page):

($w word) ($pw phonword) ($s syllable): ($w >"phon" $pw) && ($pw ^ $s)

Overall Structure

This diagram shows some of the layers of annotation attached to a small portion of speech from a Switchboard conversation (see here for a full summary). We can use this to illustrate how data is represented in NXT: