|
SALT uses the ending punctuation mark to determine the type of utterance. Every utterance must end with one of these end-of-utterance punctuation marks: a period (.), an exclamation mark (!), a question mark (?), a tilde (~), a greater-than sign (>), and a caret (^). No other characters should follow the ending punctuation, not even quotation marks or special codes.
Statements
Statements end with a period or an exclamation mark. Use a period at the end of statements, e.g., C He has a pet dog. Use an exclamation mark to indicate strong feelings or high volume, e.g., C Wow! Both statements and exclamations are considered statements for SALT analysis purposes.
|
Questions
Questions end with a question mark. Use a question mark for interrogatives, e.g., E What is that? You should also use a question mark for tag questions. Tag questions are brief questions that are attached to statements, and that seek agreement, e.g., E That go/3s here, right? |
Intonation prompts
Intonation prompts end with a tilde (~). An intonation prompt is an open-ended utterance used to prompt another speaker for a response using rising intonation. It is not presented in the form of a question but rather as a "fill in the blank". For example,
E The book or the color/s or~
E If it/'s a skip card then you have to~
E Well, there was Tigger and~
E So they did/n't come to your house because~
Even though these prompts are intended to elicit more elaborate language, they may result in shorter, non-spontaneous responses because they also take much of the burden of sentence construction off the other speaker. Because of this, it is important to distinguish the utterances that are the result of intonation prompts.
|
Abandoned utterances
Abandoned utterances end with a greater-than sign (>). If a speaker voluntarily stops in mid-utterance, end that utterance fragment with a greater-than sign and do not use a period. For example,
C Then the frog jump/ed into the>
C Then the man was look/ing at what was in there.
C And then the boy>
: :04 { 4-second pause }
E What about the boy?
C He heard something.
|
Interrupted utterances
Interrupted utterances end with a caret (^). If a speaker is interrupted before completing an utterance, end the utterance fragment with a caret and no period. For example,
C I have a dog.
E What kind of^
C He/'s black and white.
|
|
