- 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
- Put on headphones/earbuds that are connected to 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 > 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 item started and 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.
- 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 annotation 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".)
- 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 all instances of syllables that appear to contain (r) (up to 25), i.e., /r/ in a syllable coda, you might later exclude some tokens when you make your distributional analysis charts.
- 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.
- In the tier labeled "dependent variable," create an annotation field that corresponds to the syllable in the .wav file where the first (r) is spoken (the field in your "tokens" tier). To do this, click the field in the "tokens" tier to highlight in. Then double-click in the "Dependent variable" tier just below the highlighted annotation field in the "tokens" tier. (A field will be created that is the same size as the field in the "tokens" tier.)
- In each annotation field in the "Dependent variable" tier, type "r" if you hear the [r] pronounced. Type "0" (zero) if you hear only a vowel, but no consonantal [r]. Hit "enter" after typing in the appropriate code. This will save what you typed and move the cursor out of the annotation field.
- Once you have marked and coded the first few tokens, your file should look something like this.
- To check if you are on the right track, export your file as a tab-delimited text file.
- In the File menu, choose "Export as..."
- Select "Tab-delimited Text"
- Under Select Tiers, click the boxes for "main speaker", "tokens" and "dependent variable."
- Under Output options, select the boxes for "Separate column for each tier" and "Repeat values..."
- Click "OK" and then "Close."
Open the newly created .txt file in Excel. (If you get the Import window, just click "Finish.") Somewhere in your .txt file (you may need to scroll to the bottom), there should be a few rows that look like this:
Note: Capitalization matters when you are coding tokens! "R" will not be seen as the same thing as "r" when you start running your analyses.
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Updated January 24, 2025