ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I describe a system for transcribing and analyzing certain aspects of spoken language. It is a system I have been using, with continuing modifications, over a number of years for various purposes. My goal has been to represent not only the segmental but also selected aspects of the prosodic features of a language in ways that lend themselves to analysis in terms of information flow. My use of this term includes, but is not restricted to, the movement of ideas into and out of the consciousness of speakers and hearers, changes in clause level and discourse level topics, manifestations of foregrounding and backgrounding, and phenomena involved in the identifiability (or “definiteness”) of referents (see Chafe, 1976, for an earlier overview of some of these phenomena).
