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Annotation Pro + TGA: automation of speech timing analysis

This paper reports on two tools for the automatic statistical analysis of selected properties of speech timing on the basis of speech annotation files. The tools, one online (TGA, Time Group Analyser) and one offline (Annotation Pro+TGA), are intended to support the rapid analysis of speech timing data without the need to create specific scripts or spreadsheet functions for this purpose. The software calculates, inter alia, mean, median, rPVI, nPVI, slope and intercept functions within interpausal groups, provides visualisations of timing patterns, as well as correlations between these, and parses interpausal groups into hierarchies based on duration relations. Although many studies, especially in speech technology, use computational means, enquiries have shown that a large number of phoneticians and phonetics students do not have script creation skills and therefore use traditional copy+spreadsheet techniques, which are slow, preclude the analysis of large data sets, and are prone to inconsistencies. The present tools have been tested in a number of studies on English, Mandarin and Polish, and are introduced here with reference to results from these studies.