Language Analysis Tools

[phonology_rocks]

Hi All!

I am new to this forum, I came upon it sort of by chance, and I think its really interesting! Anyways I am currently a frist Linguistics MA student, my concentration is phonology. I am really lucky because as an undergraduate, I did some work on PRATT. ANyways today after class, I was super happy, because my professor approached me asking me if I would be interested in a RA position with him and other science faculty. We would be analysiing the langauge of pyschiatric patients, I explained that I only really understand PRATT but would be honored to work with him. Everything is very unoffical as of right now. However, my professor and I chatted for a long time, and he said they are still looking for other langauge analysis software they would be able to use as tools in this research, and that he wondered if I could come up with anything....and I figured I would ask around, but I thouhgt it would be a good idea to ask you all!

Has any body every analysised phoemic speech sounds using a tool other than PRATT?

[LinguisticMystic]

I've only ever needed to use Praat for that kind of thing (and you can of course find/write scripts to make it do other, more precise, things depending on what you need)... but if you for whatever reason needed to measure reaction times or eye-tracking, you can use E-Prime software. That's all I can think of for you!

[phonology_rocks]

Wow Thanks I'll look into E-Prime software!! Now with Pratt, what have you found makes recording most clear? Going from a recorder to a computer?? or is there a better way..I will look into scrips too! thanks!

[ladyling]

It really depends on the kind of linguistic analysis you'll be doing. For recording, the best way is to avoid recording directly to computer because you'll end up with a fair amount of noise from the various electronic systems inside the computer. I think the gold standard is still recording to DAT, then transferring to a computer, but the P-sided among us would probably know better. If you're not doing detailed phonetic analysis, the sort of noise I mentioned may not matter.

If you're planning to use video or will be doing a good deal of transcription, I'd recommend getting ELAN. It supports video and allows you to create transcription tiers. I think it was created for use with signers, and it's fairly easy to customize if you can program even a little. One of the great things about the tiered transcription is that if you're looking at non-verbal linguistic patterns (e.g., gestures while talking, etc.) or code-switching, you can transcribe each relevant pattern on a different tier, and they'll all line up with the audio or video automatically. And, of course, it supports IPA characters and fonts.

E-Prime is an experimental design software. It's great if you're planning to run experiments to do direct testing of these psychiatric patients, but it sounds more like you're planning to record their speech and then analyze some aspect of their linguistic patterns. For that, E-Prime probably won't help you, and since it's an expensive tool, you want to be sure it will be useful to you.

I hope that helps!

[Bumblebee]

I usually use Praat for sound analysis, but one of my professors uses WaveSurfer. As for the recordings, having a good microphone also helps. I've used a Sony mini-disc for my recordings and a Shure headmounted microphone attached and it has worked for me so far.

[phonology_rocks]

You guys are Great!! Thanks!!!