Instruments and methods for the analysis of prosody

Abstract

The development of speech analysis software and the creation of a huge number of annotated speech corpora have positive effects not only in the field of linguistic research but also in language learning (especially in second language acquisition). Speech analysis software and speech annotation systems allow researchers to conduct experiments such as contrastive analyses of intonation patterns produced by native speakers (henceforth NSs) and non-native speakers (henceforth NNSs). Praat and To BI are useful also because they can be used in students’ instruction: the visualization of sound waves, spectrograms, pitch lines and their annotations provide a feedback that helps students and researchers to analyze and evaluate speech productions.