Breathing
Symbol | <B>
Definition | The inhalation or exhalation that occurs during spontaneous speech often happens at prosodic or syntactic boundaries. In a transcript, only breathing that can be heard on the recording is transcribed. Breathing often occurs in combination with <Smack> (lip smack, tongue smack), which is described in the Human Noises section. An exhalation that follows a word-final plosive consonant (like the 't' in wet) should be interpreted as a lengthening of the plosive consonant (wet<L>), rather than as breathing.
Rules for Transcribing the <B>
| 1. Breathing should NOT be transcribed during a pause. The rationale is that if a person is breathing, then he or she is not pausing. 2.If punctuation and respiration collide, punctuation is always transliterated first followed by the respiration element <B> . 3. For an instance where an inhalation is followed by an audible exhalation - e.g. the breath is one unit - only one <B>needs to be transcribed.
Examples | 1.when do you <uhm> <B> want to go ?
| 2. why ? <B> do you know her ?
| 3. oh ,<B> <uh> okay .
Special Cases | In German transcriptions <A> (German: Atmen) is often used instead of <B>.