Phon is a software program with a user-friendly graphical interface that facilitates the building of corpora of phonological data and their analysis. While Phon was built with the needs of acquisition researchers in mind, it can be used in virtually all areas of corpus-based research in phonology. Among other functions, Phon supports:
• Multimedia data linkage
• Utterance segmentation (time alignment) in separate data records
• Multiple-blind transcription (standards for both the IPA and the Extended IPA sets of characters and diacritics are supported)
• Automatic labelling of transcribed segments for syllable positions within the string
• Alignment of IPA forms, e.g. between target/model forms and the forms actually produced by the speaker/learner
All of the functions supported by Phon are accessible through a user-friendly graphical interface. Databases managed within Phon can also be queried using a powerful search interface. The queries can be based on orthographic strings, IPA strings, both of which can also be searched using regular expressions. The data can also be queried base on phonological criteria (e.g. segment class, or position within the syllable, word, etc.), database metadata (e.g. speaker’s names or ages), etc.
Version 2 of Phon brings together two of the most important areas of empirical investigation in the are of child phonology, as it integrates transcript-based analyses of phonological data with the facilities for acoustic analysis provided by Praat. With this new version of Phon, and in addition to the functions listed above, the user can now:
• Import existing TextGrids into Phon sessions
• Generate TextGrids from existing Phon records
• Visualize TextGrids directly into Phon
• Send TextGrids to Praat for editing in a single click
• Run speech analysis functions directly from the Phon Query menu
• Export speech measurement data for further analysis
This software program works on both Mac OS X, Windows and Linux platforms and supports Unicode font encoding. Phon data can be converted into the CHILDES format through the conversion utilities Chatter and PhonTalk.
Together, these features facilitate easy data exchange among researchers and the construction of a shared PhonBank database. Phon is being made freely available to the community as open-source software. It meets specific needs related to the study of first language phonological development (including babbling), second language acquisition, and speech disorders. We are currently expanding the functionality of Phon in order to use it in conjunction with Praat.
Although this is not an obligatory requirement, we encourage the users of Phon to contribute their corpus data to PhonBank, the component of the CHILDES public database focusing specifically on babbling and phonological development.
Citing Phon
Rose, Yvan, Brian MacWhinney, Rodrigue Byrne, Gregory Hedlund, Keith Maddocks, Philip O’Brien & Todd Wareham. 2006. Introducing Phon: A Software Solution for the Study of Phonological Acquisition. In David Bamman, Tatiana Magnitskaia & Colleen Zaller (eds.), Proceedings of the 30th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. 489-500.
Rose, Yvan & Brian MacWhinney. 2014. The PhonBank Project: Data and Software-Assisted Methods for the Study of Phonology and Phonological Development. In Jacques Durand, Ulrike Gut & Gjert Kristoffersen (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Corpus Phonology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 308-401.
Téléchargement • Download: https://www.phon.ca/phontrac
Design et programmation • Design and implementation
Gregory Hedlund, Yvan Rose, Jason Gedge, Rod Byrne, Todd Wareham, Philip O'Brien, Keith Maddocks, Allison Penney
Financement • Funding
SSHRC • CRSH, CFI • FCI
NIH, NSF
Petro-Canada Award for Young Innovators • Prix Petro-Canada pour les jeunes innovateurs
Arts Faculty and Science Faculty at Memorial • Faculté des Lettres et Faculté des Sciences à Memorial