Current text analysis and/or transcription software

[Richard J Senghas]

Hello Fellow LingAnthers,

I'm revisiting the software tools I'll introduce and use while teaching linguistic anthro methods for those who might be doing collection and analysis at either of a) the "higher" level discourse/conversation/text analysis of interviews, or b) the "lower" (closer) levels of transcription for phonological/morphosyntactic and even grammatical-pragmatic work.  More often, my students are interested in ethnographic work that includes language in interactions as data, but some are also interested in more formal linguists, sometimes even typology, language change/variation, etc.  At this point, I'm interested in the applications for transcription/analysis, and not the recording equipment (i.e., microphones, cameras, and other A/V gear).

Because of my own particular areas of research involving sign languages, I have leaned towards the types of software that include video (e.g., ELAN, with multi-tiered transcriptions), but for my courses I want to include tools/applications for those analyzing spoken languages, or even working with textual data, so non-video suggestions are encouraged.  Interested in various platforms (UNIX, MacOS, Windows &t, web/browser, perhaps even iOS or Android?).

I'd like to know what people find most useful, and which seem relatively easy to learn and use.  I find it interesting how often I still fall back to relatively primitive spreadsheets and flat-file databases and text-documents (e.g. Word with or w/o line numbering).

Much of the descriptions, tools, and projects I've been finding available in web searches are several years old (sometimes much older), but if folks have tried newer options and then have retreated back to old standbys, am interested in those accounts, too.

Best regards,

-RJS
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Richard J. Senghas, Ph.D.
Professor, Anthropology
Vice Chair of the Faculty
Sonoma State University
1801 East Cotati Avenue
Rohnert Park, CA 94928-3609
Richard.Senghas[at]sonoma.edu
707-664-3920 (fax)