ProsodyPro ---- A Praat script for large-scale systematic prosody analysis (Version 3.0; Previously TimeNormalizF0.praat)

by Yi Xu

An interactive Praat script that allows you to:

Motivation and brief history

ProsodyPro is developed as a convenient tool for our own research. It allows us to systematicaly process large amount of speech data with high precision. It has maximally reduced the amount of human labor by automizing tasks that do not require human judgment, such as locating and opening sound files, taking measurements, and saving raw results in formats ready for further graphical and statistical analysis. On the other hand, it also allows human intervention of processes that are prone to error in automatic algorithms such as pitch detection and segmentation.

The f0 trimming time-normalization algorithms, which are part of the core of the script, were developed in my PhD research (Xu, 1993), which were then implemented in a C program working in conjunction with xwaves, which, like Praat, generates automatic vocal cycle markings that saves most of the manual labor in marking the cycle manually as done in my dissertation. The arrival of Praat, thanks to the brilliant invention of Paul Boersma and David Weenink, makes it possible to put these algorithms together in a single script that can run on all major computer platforms. It also solved the problem of having to write a different C program for each new experiment.

The first version of the script was made public in 2005. Since then it has been used in many research projects. Some are listed here.

Instructions

  1. Put ProsodyPro.praat in the folder containing the sound files to be analyzed, and launch Praat;
  2. Select Open Praat Script... from the top menu;
  3. Locate ProsodyPro.praat in the dialogue window and select it;
  4. When the script window opens in Praat, select Run from the Run menu (or type the key shortcut command-r or control-r);
  5. In the startup window, check or uncheck the boxes according to your need, and set appropriate values in the text fields or simply use the default values. Select the task by checking the appropriate radio button.
  6. Click OK and three windows will appear. The first window (PointProcess) displays the waveform together with vocal cycle marks (vertical lines) generated by Praat. This is where you can manually add the missing marks and delete the redundant ones. You need to do this only for the named intervals, as explained next.
  7. The second window (TextGrid) displays the waveform and spectrogram of the current sound together with optional pitch track and formant tracks in the spectrogram panel, and vocal pulse marks in the waveform panel. (These tracks and marks cannot be manually changed. So you can hide them to reduce processing time by using the corresponding menu.)
  8. At the bottom of this window are two TextGrid tiers, where you can insert interval boundaries (Tier 1) and add comments (Tier 2). For any interval that you want to have results saved, a label in Tier 1 is required. The label can be as simple as a, b, c or 1, 2, 3.
  9. The third window (Pause) allows you to control the progression of the analysis. You bring up the next found to be analyzed by changing the number (or leaving it as is) in the current_file box and pressing "Continue". The number indicates the order in the String object "list" in the Object window (a hardcopy is also saved in the current folder). The next sound will be 1 + current_file (So, type 0 to open sound 1).
  10. To end the progression of the current analysis session, press "Finish" in the Pause window, and the last sound analyzed will be shown in the Praat Info window. You can use that number as a starting point in you next analysis session.

Output

Each time you press "Continue" in the Pause window, various analysis results are saved for the current sound as text files:

If you want to change certain analysis parameters after processing all the sound files, you can rerun the script, set the "Input File No" to 1 in the startup window and check the button "Process all sounds without pause" before pressing "OK". The script will then run by itself and cycle through all the sound files in the folder one by one.

After the analysis of all the individual sound files are done, you can gather the analysis results into a number of ensemble files by running the script again and checking the button "Get ensemble results" in the startup window. The following ensemble files will be saved:

  1. means.txt
  2. normf0.txt
  3. normIntensity.txt
  4. normactutime.txt
  5. samplef0.txt
  6. f0velocity.txt
  7. maxf0.txt
  8. minf0.txt
  9. excursionsize.txt
  10. meanf0.txt
  11. duration.txt
  12. maxvelocity.txt
  13. finalf0.txt
  14. finalvelocity.txt
  15. meanintensity.txt

Note that you can generate the ensemble files only if you have analyzed at least one sound following the steps described earlier.


Examples

The following examples show how functional contrasts can be easily brought out by time-normalized f0 contours, whether plotted on normalized time or mean time.


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_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Data from Xu (1999) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Data from Xu & Xu (2005)


Need more help?

Detailed instructions can be also found at the beginning of the script.

For more information, take a look at FAQ, and if you are still stuck, please write me (yi.xu at ucl.ac.uk).

Bug reports, suggestions on improvement and new features are also welcome.

How to cite

Xu, Y. (2005-2010). ProsodyPro.praat. Available from: http://crdo.fr/crdo000723

Published research making use of ProsodyPro (or its predecessor TimeNormalizeF0)