LIN 351 Week 4 HW: Getting ELAN ready and coding the dependent variable
In this assignment, you set up ELAN and mark 25 (r) tokens in ELAN for each speaker (that you selected for the Week 3 HW).
ELAN was introduced in class in Week 2. As well as the resources in Quercus, here are many resources for learning what you need about ELAN. Step by step instructions and a video of me teaching these skills are included.
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Start ELAN (you downloaded it for the previous assignment).
- Choose Open from the File menu and select one of the .eaf files that you downloaded. eaf indicates an ELAN Annotation File.
- You may be asked to locate the .wav file that has the same name as the .eaf file, or ELAN may find it automatically.
- Choose AUTO BACKUP > 1 minute from the File menu. Although this should make ELAN save your file every minute, please select "Save" from the "Edit" menu regularly as you work. Back up onto a different disk at the end of every work session, at least. Losing the work you have done when/if your computer crashes is NOT a valid reason for an extension, unfortunately.
- Immediately save your file as YOURLASTNAME_YOURFIRSTNAME_SPEAKERCODE.eaf. For example, I might create "NAGY_NAOMI_F70W.eaf." (The program will add the ".eaf" suffix to indicate that this is an ELAN Annotation File.)
- In the Tiers menu, choose Change Tier Attributes. Put in your name in the Annotator field for the following tiers:
- tokens
- dependent variable
- preceding vowel
- following context
This indicates who did the work coding the data in these tiers. Be sure click the "Change" button after changing each tier. (Otherwise whatever you type won't get saved.)
- Put on headphones that are plugged into your computer.
- You should see a soundwave in the center of the ELAN window.
(Have a look at this picture) If you don’t see the wave, Command-Click or Right-click on the place where the soundwave should be (it will be showing as a flat horizontal line). This creates a pop-up menu. Choose a number to magnify/Vertical Zoom by. (See ELAN manual on vertical zoom.)
Test and adjust your volume. (Apple menu > System Preferences > Sound > Output for a Mac).
- Click around on some buttons in ELAN and explore what they do. (Hovering over most of them will bring up an indicator of their function.)
- In the Options menu, make sure Annotation mode is selected.
- In the tabs that run across the top of the soundwave window, select Controls to adjust volume and speed of playback. Then switch to the Grid tab. Here you will see a list of everything that has been transcribed in the selected tier, along with the timepoints at which each items started end finished. There's a pull-down menu above the tabs from which you can select different tiers to view in "grid view."
- Your window should look like this.
- Find and label tokens of your dependent variable.
- In the tier labeled "tokens," create an annotation field that corresponds to the syllable in the .wav file where the first (r) is spoken. To do this, highlight a portion of the .wav. Listen (Shift+S, or click the Play button with the blue triangle) and see if it's the right part. If not, keep looking and listening. When you have highlighted the appropriate section of the soundwave, double-click in the "tokens" tier to create an annotation field in which to code that token. When you double-click, a field will be created that is the size of the portion of the .wav that you highlighted. That field, and whatever text you type in it, is time-linked to that part of the .wav. Afterwards, you can click that field and hear the corresponding syllable.
- In the annotation field, type the word that contains the (r).
- Continue through the file, following the principle of accountability, to label the first 25 words containing an instance of (r). (In a word like "harder", which contains two tokens of (r) you could mark one syllable as "harder1" and the other as "harder2". Or you can type "haRder" and "hardeR".)
- Circumscribe the variable context. “Circumscribing the variable context” means determining what tokens will be included in your analysis and what will not be included, with principled reasons. Although you should mark the first 25 instances of syllables that appear to contain (r), i.e., /r/ in a syllable coda, you might later exclude some tokens when you make your distributional analysis charts. (Think about why you might need to exclude some tokens.)
- Be sure to only code coda /r/s, NOT any /r/s that appear in the onset of a syllable.
- Analyze the data from the main speaker only. Ignore anything said by anyone other than the main speaker (the speaker for whom the file is named) for this assignment.
- If there are any tokens you can't decide whether to include or not, create a "Notes" tier and make a note in that tier at the appropriate timepoint.
- Code your dependent variable.
- Follow the same procedure to mark and code at least 25 tokens of (r) for each of the 4 speakers you selected.
- To submit this assignment, upload your 4 .eaf files in Quercus (Week 4 Homework: Code dep. var).
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Updated
January 20, 2023