24.10.2001: Prosodic transcription

Overview:

• What is transcription?
• Why transcribe at all?
• Segmental transcription (orthographic, IPA, SAMPA IPA coding)
• Prosodic transcription
• Categories of prosodic transcription

Report(s):

Web research for the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), and for examples of segmental (IPA) and prosodic transcription at different universities around the world.

We will be using this WAV file for transcription and annotation practice, so please download it and store it in your own working directory.

Discussion:

1. Listen to the WAV file which you have downloaded, for instance with the Windows Media Player.
2. Start the Praat phonetics software.
3. Open the WAV file which you have downloaded with the "Read/Read from file ..." menu option.
4. Use the play function to listen to the speech signal.
5. Transcribe the signal into a Word document:
   1. in orthography,
   2. in broad transcription with stress marks (IPA font),
   3. in broad transcription with stress marks (SAMPA font).
      Note: Search for SAMPA on the web, and look for examples of how to transcribe English in SAMPA.
   Hint: In order to align the words and their transcriptions, put them into a table with three rows, the transcriptions of individual words in the columns.

   Another hint: In order to listen to details, mark the segment of the signal you want to examine, and click the button which matches the marked segment.

6. Use the edit function to visualise the speech signal.

Literature: Check the relevant parts of Clark & Yallop on prosody:

Clark, John & Yallop, Colin (1995, 2nd edition). An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology. Oxford: Blackwell.