<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace;color:#4c1130">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Hello all,<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">I would like to start a
conversation about something and I’m taking a shot at lingtyp as a potential starting
point for this discussion (perhaps not the right venue, because the issue is
perhaps specific to phonological typology).<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">One thing I’ve been confused and/or
frustrated about since I started investigating tone and stress has been the use
of spectrograms and/or pitch tracks in language description. It seems to me
that linguists have very different views about what spectrograms and/or pitch
tracks are for, but it has never been brought out in the open, to my knowledge. <span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">When I was an MA student, I was
basically taught that the main purpose of a spectrogram was to show how one went
about measuring some phenomena in the acoustic signal. A pitch track could be an
expositional device to show variation in the signal perhaps related to speaker differences
or intonation (Cruz & Woodbury 2014). However, spectrograms and pitch
tracks are not “phonetic evidence” for a phonological claim. Due to the
variability of the phonetic signal, acoustic phonetic data only really becomes
phonetic evidence when it is aggregated for the purpose of statistical analysis
(Tallman 2010). <span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">At least that’s what I thought in
2011, but I realized later that this was not the view shared by many linguists
and, at least among non-phoneticians, my position is perhaps a minority one. In
grammars and descriptive works, linguists often present individual spectrograms
and pitch tracks as one off data points that support a claim. In the vast
majority of the cases (except perhaps when vastly different intonational
contours are being compared), I often struggle to know what the purpose of
these displays or pictures are. How do we know they are not cherry picked? How
do we know that these displays are representative? <span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">The differences of opinion about
the use of spectrograms have emerged for me in the reviewing process – one reviewer
says this spectrogram is useless, another says it's informative etc. one reviewer
demands a pitch track, another says it does not communicate anything . etc.
Opinions are simultaneously contradictory but aggressive and definitive.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Sometimes the subtlety of the
pitch phenomena the linguist is describing is way out of step with the ability
of the pitch track to represent. I look at the pitch track and I think: “I
cannot distinguish between pitch phenomena associated with tones and
microprosody in this example so it is unclear what the purpose of the pitch
track is or what it adds” or “if you were to tell me what tones the language
had and give me this spectrogram / pitch track, I would not be able to associate
them with any of the syllables in any consistent way”. Or perhaps the algorithm
used to draw pitch isn’t appropriate and it's very difficult to understand what
is being communicated by the display. <span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">I have started to wonder whether
there were any guidelines or conventions for the use of spectrograms and
whether others perhaps had any thoughts on the issue. Specifically I am
interested in the idea that a single spectrogram could serve as “phonetic
evidence”. I still find this view strange in light of the well known “stochastic”
and “multivariate” relationship between phonological categories and phonetic
realization (Pierrehumbert, Beckman, Ladd 2000; Mazaudon 2014, among many
others), but it still seems to be widely held in our field.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Cruz, E. & Woodbury, A. C.
2014. Finding a way into a family of tone languages: The story and methods of
the Chatino Language Documentation Project. <i>Language Documentation & Conservation
</i>8:490-524.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Mazaudon, M. 2014. Studying
emergent tone-systems in Nepal: Pitch, phonation and word-tone in Tamang. <i>Language
Documentation & Conversation </i>8:587-612.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Pierrehumbert, J., Beckman, M.
and Ladd, D. 2000. Conceptual foundations of phonology as a laboratory science.
<i>Phonological knowledge: Conceptual and empirical issues. </i>Oxford: Oxford
University Press. <span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Tallman, Adam. J.R. 2010.
Acoustic correlates of Lenis and Fortis Stops in Manitoba Saulteaux. MA Thesis:
University of Manitoba. <span></span></p>
</div><br>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><font face="times new roman, serif">Adam J.R. Tallman</font></div><div dir="ltr"><font face="times new roman, serif">Post-doctoral Researcher <br></font></div><div dir="ltr"><font face="times new roman, serif">Friedrich Schiller Universität<br></font></div><div><font face="times new roman, serif">Department of English Studies<br></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>