A Phonetic Summarizer for Sociolinguists

Abstract

PhoSS, a Phonetic Summarizer for Sociolinguists, is a piece of software that accepts .wav and accompanying .txt transcripts for multiple informants, aligns the files using the Penn Phonetics Lab Forced Aligner, extracts formants with Praat, normalizes formant values using R, and summarizes the information in semi-prose output files with KWIC concordances based on phonetic criteria. PhoSS will compare individuals to a group, directly compare two individuals, or give descriptive output of just the individuals. Two test cases demonstrate PhoSS in action on informants from the Roswell Voices corpus. PhoSS makes large-scale analysis of speech corpora feasible to small research teams and is written using only free and open-source components.