Exercise: Crying

In this Chapter, we covered the conventions for transcribing crying sounds. Let’s practice using these conventions!

Question 1

Transcribe the clip below, using both the conventions covered in the Chapter, and the following six elements of sound characteristic of crying:

1. Elevated pitch: preceding (1 word) “↑Yeah” or enclosing (more than one): “↑Yeah I am↑”
2. Tremulous or wobbly delivery, enclose in tildes (~): preceding (1 word) “~THAt” or enclosing (more than one word) “~THAt wasn’~”
3. Aspiration particles in words: parenthesis (h) represents plosive outbreath; h represents ‘breathy’ delivery.
4. Creaky delivery: preceding (1 word) “#ma” or enclosing (more than one word) “#ma best.#”
5. Tut: “.tch” or “.TCH”
6. Sobbing:  can be breathy and done as inbreath “.hihh” or outbreath “huhh” or sharply inhaled or exhaled; if the latter, enclose in greater/less than symbols: “>huh huh<” “>.hihh<“

1.UI3: uptight 13.00

Call:    The police don’t take any notice of me and they 
         misunderstand the things I say and I
CT:      Mm
Call:    I mean I get very uptight when I’m talking about it and I’m 
         probably saying all the wrong things

Clip 1: Uptight

Answer

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Question 2

Transcribe the sob and sniff in the following fragment

Clip 2: Sob and Sniff

Answer

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Question 3

The following fragment contains talk that may be hard to hear through the crying. Try to represents all the words and sounds you can hear:

Clip 3: Nobody Else

Answer