The pilot investigated integrated presentations of linguistically annotated audio and text material, combining Praat and TypeCraft.
Praat is a signal analysis software developed by Paul Boersma and David Weenink from the University of Amsterdam. It is a tool widely used for the annotation of sound objects. For the present study we have taken advantage of the fact that Praat annotation data resides in a TextGrid object that exists separately from the sound object.Specifying a sentence tier allowed us easy referencing of data across applications. At present our sound signal representations are static, and selective, that is, they focus on the presentation of one selected feature to illustrate interesting correlations across phonetic and linguistic categories.
Description of the material
For our study we selected 10 sentences from the phonetic database of the Sound to Sense project.
Sentences 1 to 3
Speaker dialect: Bergen
Jeg ser bildet, kan du si, litt på skrått ned, ovenifra.
“I see the picture, say, somewhat diagonally downwards, from above.”
Hun står med ryggen mot veggen opp og ser på han som skal kaste ballen som står utenfor og peker på boksene.
“She's standing with her back up against the wall and looking at him, who is standing outside and about to throw the ball, and pointing towards the boxes.”
The TextGrid files are opened together with the matching sound files for viewing in the Praat application. The TextGrid files consist of three tiers, 'Word' (rendered in Bokmål orthography) 'Phoneme' (shows underlying segments) and 'Note' (shows surface realisation with IPA symbols, and other notes).
Here is a list of glosses used in the 'Note' tier:
Phonology/Phonetics:
BrV = Segent realised with breathy voice
CrV = Segent realised with creaky voice
DV = Underlying voiced segment realised devoiced
EPN = Epenthesis
RD = Reduction of segment (e.g. corner vowel realised as schwa or plosive as fricative).
V = Underlying non-voiced segment realised voiced
Morphophonology/Syntax
CL = Clitic
Other
ERR = The speaker errs and corrects himself
HES = (Audible) hesitation from speaker