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This paper describes a novel computational toolkit for tonal analysis: ATLAS (Automated Tone Level Annotation System). Tone remains a challenge in many language documentation projects, and far too often still, one comes across descriptive and theoretical treatments of tone languages in which tone marking is entirely absent or of questionable accuracy. ATLAS takes as its input a WAV file and TextGrid delimiting tone- bearing segments and outputs normalized pitch level annotations intermediate between raw f0 and phonemic categories. These “tone level” annotations represent a discrete numerical version of the dashes often used as a broad phonetic transcription of tone. The number of levels can be set by the researcher, and a number of raw phonetic measures are also outputted by the tool. ATLAS is designed to be used by anyone regardless of experience with tone or computational methods, thus promoting the inclusion of objective, replicable pitch data in documentary, descriptive, or theoretical materials on tone languages. We also show the utility of ATLAS’s broad phonetic annotations in understanding the surface realization of already determined phonemic categories and in making hypotheses about unanalyzed tone systems.
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Tonal context influences tone-duration interaction: Evidence from Cantonese
Phonetic typological studies suggest that syllable duration is inversely correlated with the accompanying tone's approximate average f0, and tones with dynamic f0 movement tend to be in longer syllables rather than shorter ones. Systematic instrumental investigations on tone-duration interaction remain scant, however; existing studies might be confounded as tonal context may impact duration realization due to phonetic constraints on tonal movement. This study investigates the effect of tonal environment on the durational realization of tones in Cantonese, showing that tone-dependent duration variation is governed by the tonal context. Implications of these findings for existing phonetic typology concerning tone-duration interaction are discussed.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1827409
- PAR ID:
- 10589021
- Publisher / Repository:
- Acoustical Society of America (ASA)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- JASA Express Letters
- Volume:
- 3
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 2691-1191
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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