Six terms fundamental to a model of transcription

#KingsDH

Paul Caton

Background

The

Huitfeldt

Sperberg-McQueen

Marcoux

model of transcription

The core of the HSM model of transcription

E-token-sequence T-token-sequence

E-type-sequence T-type-sequence

Exemplar document (E) Transcription document (T)

instantiates instantiates

act of transcription

The core of the HSM model of transcription

E-token-sequence T-token-sequence

E-type-sequence T-type-sequence

Exemplar document (E) Transcription document (T)

instantiates instantiates

then T is a successful

transcription of E

if=

( ∀ t1 : tokens(E)) ( 1 ∃ t2 : tokens(T)) (t2 = RET(t1)) ( ∧ ∀ t1 : tokens(T)) ( 1 ∃t2 :tokens(E)) (t2 = RTE(t1))

( ∧ ∀ t1 : tokens(E), t2 : tokens(T)) (t2 = RET(t1) ⇔ t1 = RTE(t2) type(∧ t1) = type(RET(t1)))

Justification

Context

"But documents, as we use the term, are physical objects like manuscripts, typescripts, carved stones, magnetic tapes, disk drives, CD-ROMs, or some portion of such an object.” "By a document we understand an individual object containing marks. A mark is a perceptible feature of a document (normally something visible, e.g. a line in ink).”

"Any written document takes the form of physical marks which are tokens of particular types."

SURFACEMARKREADINGTOKEN-SEQUENCEEXEMPLARDOCUMENT

Reference story ...

• perceptible• measurable• results from natural processes or

volitional acts• exists independently • (and so) can be returned to• (and) changes to it are perceptible

SURFACE

• perceptible difference made to part of a SURFACE

• from activity of living organism• either application of X to• or alteration of intrinsic Y• is perceptible and measurable by contrast

MARK

READING

is the process by which an agent attempts to discover and establish at least one TYPE-SEQUENCE in MARKS on a SURFACE by recognising at least one MARK to be a TOKEN

READING

• normatively: motivated • performed by agent• performed at least MARK by MARK• has three possible result states

negative ( certainty < 0 ) zero ( certainty = 0 ) positive ( certainty > 0 )

READING

Transcription is always and only possible from a zero or positive result state.

(This is why transcription and copy are not the same.)

TOKEN-SEQUENCE

• cannot be empty• is neither right nor wrong

EXEMPLAR

• a role or status• so, acquired – not intrinsic• and always relative to activity• so, non-exclusive

DOCUMENT

• = SURFACE + TEXT• each is unique

EXEMPLAR

An act of transcription necessarily involves an EXEMPLAR, but does not necessarily involve a DOCUMENT

MARK

SURFACE

READING

TOKEN-SEQUENCE (E)

EXEMPLAR

TEXT

DOCUMENT

AWARENESS OF WRITING

intent to produceTOKEN-SEQUENCE (T)

transcription copy

The sets of semantic elements that comprise the meanings of transcription and copy certainly intersect, but they are not identical and one does not subsume the other.

Sperberg-McQueen, C. M., Claus Huitfeldt, and Allen Renear (2001). Meaning and interpretation of markup. Markup Languages: Theory & Practice 2.3: 215–234

Huitfeldt, Claus, and C. M. Sperberg-McQueen (2008). What is transcription? Literary & Linguistic Computing 23.3: 295-310.

Caton, Paul (2009). Lost in Transcription: Types, Tokens, and Modality in Document Representation. Paper given at Digital Humanities 2009

Sperberg-McQueen, C. M.. Claus Huitfeldt, and Yves Marcoux (2009). What is transcription? Part 2. Talk given at Digital Humanities 2009

Huitfeldt, Claus, Yves Marcoux, and C. M. Sperberg-McQueen (2010). Extension of the type/token distinction to document structure. Paper presented at Balisage: The Markup Conference 2010

Caton, Paul (2012). On the Term ‘Text’ in Digital Humanities. Literary & Linguistic Computing. 28.2: 209-220.

Caton, Paul (2013). Pure transcriptional encoding. Paper given at Digital Humanities 2013

Sperberg-McQueen, C. M., Yves Marcoux, and Claus Huitfeldt (2014). Transcriptional implicature: a contribution to markup semantics. Paper presented at Digital Humanities 2014, Lausanne, Switzerland.

Relevant work

https://www.facebook.com/kcl.ddh#KingsDH

Department of Digital HumanitiesKing’s College London

Slides available at:www.slideshare.net/PaulCaton/