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Third Person Singular Verb Inflections
Use the bound morpheme /3S to indicate third person singular verb inflections, e.g., he look/3s,
the frog jump/3s.
Do not mark irregular verbs such as does and has. |
Progressive Inflection
Use the bound morpheme /ING for present progressive inflections that indicate ongoing action, e.g., call/ing,
walk/ing. The /ING is added to the verb stem without changing the spelling of the stem word, e.g., swim/ing.
However, do not mark participles, such as flying bird, gerunds, such as I like dancing, or concatenatives, such as gonna, hafta, and wanna. Concatenatives are treated as single words. |
Regular Past Tense
Use the bound morpheme /ED to mark regular past tense inflections, e.g., she look/ed,
they call/ed,
we like/ed it. The /ED is added to the word stem with no change in the spelling of the stem, e.g., cry/ed, like/ed.
Do not mark irregular past tense verbs such as went, had and made. This decision was made to simplify the transcription format. Although used frequently, there are only a few irregular past tense verbs in English so calculations of mean length of utterance and number of different words are not greatly affected. |
Contractions
Use the slash to separate the verb stem from the contraction, e.g., he/'ll,
he/'s,
I/'m. Use /N'T or /'T for contracted negatives, e.g., can/'t,
did/n't.
However, do not use the slash to mark contractions where the sound of the root word is different in the contracted form, e.g., won't, don't. It is believed that children learn these words as whole units very early in their development. Thus, the word "didn't" is slashed because the sound of the root word is the same - "did" and "didn't". But the word "don't" is not slashed because the sound of the root word changed - from "do" to "don't". Also, do not use the slash to mark the contraction in the words "ain't" and "let's". |
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