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from a page, and each item was recorded once. These data were digitized at 10,000 Hz
using Kay Elemetric’s Computerized Speech Lab at the University of Chicago Language
Laboratories and Archives.
The second set of recordings was made by Brian and Barb Schrag at the SIL
recording studio in Yaoundé, Cameroon, on March 16-18, 1998. Mike Fox was the
recording engineer. The recordings were made with a Nakamichi 550 analog tape
recorder and an AKG D330DT microphone. The two subjects, Speakers A and K, were
both adult male native speakers of Mono, about 30 years old. The recordings included
real and possible (i.e. nonsense) words spoken in isolation, sample phrases, and a folk
story. The subjects told the story in their own words, and then read the story from a
script. All tokens were spoken at normal rate. Some of the sample phrases were spoken at
a fast and a slow rate as well. A complete list of tokens is given in Appendix E. In
addition, we recorded Speaker K producing a 2000-item word list, included in Appendix
B.
A digital audio tape (DAT) copy was made at the University of Chicago
Language Laboratories and Archives at a sampling rate of 48,000 Hz and then converted
to WAV files using SoundDesigner II, version 2.8. The files were then downsampled for
analysis to 11,025 Hz using Cool Edit 2000. 1
Analysis of the tokens was done primarily using Kay Elemetric’s Computerized
Speech Lab. Additional analysis was done using SIL’s Speech Analyzer, version 1.06a.
Each figure in this chapter indicates which of the two programs was used for a given
analysis.
1 One reason for downsampling is that SIL’s Speech Analyzer program can only read WAV files
which are sampled at a rate which is an integer multiple of 11,025 Hz. In cases where higher accuracy was
needed (e.g. studying the possible high frequency energy of implosives), I examined the tokens sampled at
48,000 Hz using CSL.
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