## Disfluencies

- BREAK
- -ELAB (elaboration)
- FS (false start)
- REP (repetition)

The following labels and dash tags are used to annotate disfluencies (Hindle 1983) where necessary. Disfluences are almost entirely restricted to plays in the PPCMBE2.

> Hindle, Don. 1983. Deterministic parsing of syntactic non-fluencies. In Proceedings of the 21th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 123–128.

#### BREAK

`BREAK` indicates that a phrase or sentence breaks off or is otherwise left unfinished.

>     ( (IP-MAT (NP-SBJ (PRO They))
>               (MD could@)
>               (NEG @n't)
>               (VB believe)
>               (CP-THAT (C 0)
>     	           (IP-SUB (NP-SBJ (PRO we))
>                                (VBD saw)
>                                (NP-OB1 (D a) (BREAK 0))))
>                (PUNC ...)))

#### -ELAB

The dash tag `-ELAB` indicates that a parenthetical constituent (generally already bearing a `-PRN` dash tag) elaborates on its host. Exact copies of a constituent are annotated as repetitions (`REP`).

>     ( (IP-MAT (NP-SBJ (PRO It))
>       	  (BEP is)
>     	  (NP-PRD (D a) (N trifle)
>              	  (PUNC ,)
>     	  	  (NP-PRN-ELAB (D a) (ADJ mere) (N trifle)))
>     	  (PUNC .)))

#### FS

`FS` indicates a false start. It is the default annotation for disfluencies.

>     ( (IP-MAT (FS (PRO They) (PRO they) (PRO they))              ← like this, with FS
>               (NP-SBJ (PRO they))
>               (ADVP (ADV really))
>               (VBD meant)
>               (NP-OB1 (PRO it))
>               (PUNC ?)))

>     ( (IP-MAT (NP-SBJ (PRO They))
>               (REP (PRO they) (PRO they) (PRO they))             ← not like this, with REP
>               (ADVP (ADV really))
>               (VBD meant)
>               (NP-OB1 (PRO it))
>               (PUNC ?)))

Internal structure within false starts may be indicated, but breaks are not explicitly indicated.

>     ( (IP-MAT (FS (IP-MAT (NP-SBJ (PRO I))
>                           (DOD did@)
>     		      (NEG @n't)
>     		      (VB know)))
>               (PUNC -)
>               (FS (IP-MAT (NP-SBJ (CP-FRL (WNP-1 (WPRO what))
>     	                              (C 0)
>     			              (IP-SUB (NP-SBJ (PRO I))
>     			                      (VBP mean)
>     				              (IP-INF (NP-OB1 *T*-1)
>     				  	              (TO to)))))))
>               (NP-SBJ (PRO I))
>               (BEP am)
>               (ADJP-PRD (ADV very) (ADJ sorry)
>     	            (IP-INF (TO to)
>                                 (VB hear)
>                                 (PP (P of)
>     			        (NP (PRO$ your) (N loss)))))
>               (PUNC .)))

#### REP

`REP` (in contrast to the dash tag `-ELAB`) is a full-fledged tag indicating the exact repetition of a constituent, chiefly for rhetorical reasons.

In cases that are ambiguous between `REP` and `FS`, `FS` is the default, as illustrated earlier.

Near repetitions are annotated as elaborations (`-ELAB`).

>     ( (IP-MAT (NP-SBJ (PRO It))
>       	  (BEP is)
>     	  (NP-PRD (D a) (N trifle)
>                       (PUNC ,)
>     	  	  (REP (NP (D a) (N trifle))))
>     	  (PUNC .)))