Re: VCV nonsense syllable corpus

Narayan,

If you or a colleague are familiar with Praat, you can use this Praat script to generate variations of your stimuli where there are manipulations of the pitch contour and the duration. You'll end up with your original sound, an versions where the pitch went up or down (three different pitch contours) and for each of those, a version with the original duration, as well as a shortened duration and lengthened duration. So 9 sounds total from each original sound you have.

The variables should be clear from the top of the script. As is the case for any Praat manipulation, your new sounds will be temp objects, not saved files. You can save them with another script that does batch processing. But anyway, this kind of procedure might serve your needs. It works on a PC, not sure about a Mac.

Matt

# Enter your sound directory here, within double quotes:

sound_dir$ = "C:\consonants"

# select your manipulations (these are multipliers of the pitch contour and duration)

pitch_up = 1.15

pitch_down = 0.85

duration_up = 1.2

duration_down = 0.8

# clear the info window

clearinfo

# list all the files in the folder

Create Strings as file list: "fileList", "'sound_dir$'\*.wav"

num_files = Get number of strings

# loop through the files

for index from 1 to num_files

select Strings fileList

filename$ = Get string: index

name$ = "'filename$'" - ".wav"

name$ = "'filename$'" - ".WAV"

Read from file: "'sound_dir$'\'filename$'"

# make a manipulation object using some default pitch analysis parameters

To Manipulation: 0.01, 75, 600

# create various pitch tiers

Extract pitch tier

Copy: "'name$'_p2"

Copy: "'name$'_p1"

Multiply frequencies: 0, 1000, pitch_down

select PitchTier 'name$'

Copy: "'name$'_p3"

Multiply frequencies: 0, 1000, pitch_up

# create various duration tiers

select Manipulation 'name$'

Extract duration tier

Copy: "'name$'_d2"

Copy: "'name$'_d1"

Add point: 0, duration_down

select DurationTier 'name$'_d2

Copy: "'name$'_d3"

Add point: 0, duration_up

for p_index from 1 to 3

for d_index from 1 to 3

select Manipulation 'name$'

plus PitchTier 'name$'_p'p_index'

Replace pitch tier

select Manipulation 'name$'

plus DurationTier 'name$'_d'd_index'

Replace duration tier

select Manipulation 'name$'

Get resynthesis (overlap-add)

Rename: "'name$'_p'p_index'_d'd_index'"

endfor

# cleanup

selectObject: "Sound 'name$'"

plusObject: "Manipulation 'name$'"

plusObject: "PitchTier 'name$'"

plusObject: "PitchTier 'name$'_p2"

plusObject: "PitchTier 'name$'_p1"

plusObject: "PitchTier 'name$'_p3"

plusObject: "DurationTier 'name$'"

plusObject: "DurationTier 'name$'_d2"

plusObject: "DurationTier 'name$'_d1"

plusObject: "DurationTier 'name$'_d3"

Remove

print finished with file: 'name$''newline$'

#pause finished with file: 'name$'

endfor

--------------------------------------------------------------

Matthew Winn, Au.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Speech & Hearing Sciences
University of Washington

On Tue, Oct 4, 2016 at 9:55 AM, Narayan Sankaran <Narayan_Sankaran@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi all,

I’m looking for help in finding a corpus of VCV nonsense syllables. I’m examining the cortical representation of consonants (using EEG) and want capture some invariance to acoustic variability. More so than presenting multiple talkers, I am looking for multiple repeat utterances of the same VCV within the same talker (not only different vowel contexts, but the exact VCV uttered at different rates and with as much variability in prosodic features as possible). Does anyone on this list knows of such a corpus? Many thanks in advance.

Best,

Narayan

Narayan Sankaran
Research Intern | Starkey Hearing Research Center
2150 Shattuck Ave. | Suite 408 | Berkeley, CA 94704-1362

starkey.com | starkeyresearch.com | map | email