Proceedings Fonetik 2009 - Institutionen för lingvistik

Proceedings, FONETIK 2009, Dept. of Linguistics, Stockholm UniversityFigure 2. Example showing one frame from the two video cameras taken from the Spontal database.AnnotationThe Spontal database is currently being transcribedorthographically. Basic gesture and dialog-levelannotation will also be added (e.g.turn-taking and feedback). Additionally, automaticannotation and validation methods arebeing developed and tested within the project.The transcription activities are being performedin parallel with the recording phase of theproject with special annotation tools written forthe project facilitating this process.Specifically, the project aims at annotationthat is both efficient, coherent, and to the largestextent possible objective. To achieve this,automatic methods are used wherever possible.The orthographic transcription, for example,follows a strict method: (1) automaticspeech/non-speech segmentation, (2) orthographictranscription of resulting speech segments,(3) validation by a second transcriber,(4) automatic phone segmentation based on theorthographic transcriptions. Pronunciation variabilityis not annotated by the transcribers, butis left for the automatic segmentation stage (4),which uses a pronunciation lexicon capturingmost standard variations.Figure 3. A single frame from one of the videocameras.Figure 4. 3D representation of the motion capturedata corresponding to the video frame shown inFigure 3.Concluding remarksA number of important contemporary trends inspeech research raise demands for large speechcorpora. A shining example is the study ofeveryday spoken language in dialog which hasmany characteristics that differ from writtenlanguage or scripted speech. Detailed analysisof spontaneous speech can also be fruitful forphonetic studies of prosody as well as reducedand hypoarticulated speech. The Spontal databasewill make it possible to test hypotheses onthe visual and verbal features employed incommunicative behavior covering a variety offunctions. To increase our understanding of traditionalprosodic functions such as prominencelending and grouping and phrasing, the databasewill enable researchers to study visual andacoustic interaction over several subjects anddialog partners. Moreover, dialog functionssuch as the signaling of turn-taking, feedback,attitudes and emotion can be studied from amultimodal, dialog perspective.In addition to basic research, one importantapplication area of the database is to gain192