[Lingtyp] spectrograms in linguistic description and for language comparison

[Cat Butz]

Hi Adam,

if I saw a single spectrogram in a description of a phenomenon, I'd 
assume it was there for illustrative purposes and nothing else. If we're 
going to conduct empirical research on a phonological phenomenon, we 
have to back it up with statistics, no? Otherwise, why even bother?

Best,
---
Cat Butz (she)
HHU Düsseldorf, general linguistics

Cat Butz (sie)
HHU Düsseldorf, allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft


Am 2022-11-27 11:24, schrieb Adam James Ross Tallman:
> Hello all,
> 
> 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).
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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).
> 
> 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?
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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. _Language Documentation & Conservation _8:490-524.
> 
> Mazaudon, M. 2014. Studying emergent tone-systems in Nepal: Pitch,
> phonation and word-tone in Tamang. _Language Documentation &
> Conversation _8:587-612.
> 
> Pierrehumbert, J., Beckman, M. and Ladd, D. 2000. Conceptual
> foundations of phonology as a laboratory science. _Phonological
> knowledge: Conceptual and empirical issues. _Oxford: Oxford University
> Press.
> 
> Tallman, Adam. J.R. 2010. Acoustic correlates of Lenis and Fortis
> Stops in Manitoba Saulteaux. MA Thesis: University of Manitoba.
> --
> 
> Adam J.R. Tallman
> Post-doctoral Researcher
> 
> Friedrich Schiller Universität
> 
> Department of English Studies
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