(version 3, March 1997)
copyright (1993) The Ohio State University Research Foundation
Mary E. Beckman & Gayle Ayers Elam
Ohio State University
0. Preface
0.1. What are the "Guidelines for ToBI Labelling"?
ToBI (for Tones and Break Indices) is a system for transcribing the
intonation patterns and other aspects of the prosody of English utterances.
It was devised by a group of speech scientists from various different disciplines
(electrical engineering, psychology, linguistics, etc.) who wanted a common
standard for transcribing an agreed-upon set of prosodic elements, in order
to be able to share prosodically transcribed databases across research
sites in the pursuit of diverse research purposes and varied technological
goals. Silverman et al. (1992) and Pitrelli et al. (1994) describe the
motivation for and development of the ToBI system. If you ask for this
handbook in hard copy, those papers will be appended as Appendix B. Appendix
A (which is included both in the hard copy and in the ASCII file version
of this labelling guide) is "The ToBI Annotation Conventions", the definitive
summary statement of the symbols and marks used in ToBI transcriptions,
and of the conventions that we have agreed upon for their use. The rest
of this labelling guide is a more detailed description of the system, with
reference to accompanying utterances of two types: example utterances to
illustrate points made in the text and exercise utterances to give labellers
practice on the points made in the text. These utterances are set off in
the text of the labelling guide using the following typographic conventions.
EXAMPLE << Each example utterance is also referred to in the text by its basename
within pairs of angle brackets -- e.g., the first example utterance is
<< The utterances that accompany this labelling guide can be obtained in
two formats: as digitized computer files with electronic record of the
f0 contour from the Ohio State University web and ftp distribution site
(see section 0.2) or as an audio tape with paper record of the f0 contour
(see section 0.3).
0.1.1. Notice of copyright and restrictions on use
The "Guidelines for ToBI Labelling" document and associated material
are copyrighted. The text cannot be copied or distributed in any format
unless this paragraph is included. The utterances accompanying the guide
are available to any interested user, but only for non-commercial use.
The National Science Foundation and the Ohio State University make no warranty
and accept no liability associated with the use of these materials. These
materials may be obtained only as described in Sections 0.2 and 0.3, and
are not to be redistributed by other user sites. Users may not redistribute
these materials from their own sites, but should instead tell interested
people how to obtain their own copy from the distribution site.
0.1.2. Acknowledgements
The "Guidelines for ToBI Labelling" and the accompanying utterances
were developed in the Ohio State University Linguistics Laboratory with
partial support from the National Science Foundation, and the Ohio State
University continues to support the labelling guide by providing a distribution
site for the electronic records (described in Section 0.2). Colin Wightman
generously provided the distribution site for the electronic records for
version 2.0 of the labelling guide in his lab at the New Mexico Institute
of Mining and Technology. Jennifer Venditti provided LaTeXing and various
other editing expertise for this earlier version, which we have relied
on in producing this new one. Kim Silverman and John Pitrelli developed
the original transcriber script, on which we based the primary shell scripts
for viewing the examples and doing the exercises. David Talkin helped in
innumerable ways, such as by developing the scripts for the cardinal examples.
Harald Singer developed an alternative electronic format for version 2.0,
and Stefanie Jannedy set up the web page for it and for the ftp site.
0.2. Getting and using the digitized utterances and f0 tracks
If you have waves(tm) (an Entropic Research Laboratory product) or a
similar computer display system, obtain the speech files, electronic record
of the f0 contour, and label files by ftp from the Ohio State University
distribution site. Section 0.2.1 describes that version.
There is also an Emu version that Steve Cassidy helped us to create.
You can get that version from the Emu home page at Macquarie University.
If you are reading this page over the WWW,
click here to go to the "Emu and ToBI" page.
And the labels have been converted to praat TextGrid files.
If you are reading this page over the WWW,
click here to go to the English ToBI home and download these files.
0.2.1. Getting the digitized utterances and f0 tracks
There are two options for obtaining the ToBI materials depending upon
how much disk space users have available. For those with sufficient disk
space there is a single large tarfile for convenience. This option requires
having about 40 MB available during the installation process; the full
materials occupy about 20 MB once the installation is completed and the
tarfile is removed. If you do not have enough space to have both the complete
tarfile and all the installed files at the same time, use the second option.
There are three smaller tarfiles which together contain all the materials
contained in the single large tarfile. That is, they contain the speech
files, f0 records, and label files divided into three parts by order of
occurrence in the Guidelines. In addition to the single large or three
smaller tarfiles, you will need to get the "essentials" tarfile, which
is about 2.5 MB and contains an ASCII version of "The Guidelines for ToBI
Labelling", and the scripts and tools for displaying the f0 tracks and
labels.
If you are reading this page over the WWW,
click
here to access the tarfiles. Download the README-file first for descriptions
of the tar files and of the directory structure that they will set up on
your home system.
...
0.2.2. A less interactive electronic version
Version 2.0 of the labelling guide has been converted to a series of
html files that can be fetched to your computer for perusal and playback.
The F0 contours are embedded as gif images and the audio files are embedded
in au format. The conversion
to this format was done by Harald Singer, and it is available on the Ohio
State University Linguistics Laboratory web site. Click
here.
If you have a PC running Windows, you may find it better to download
the audio files in wav format to play. Get these from our ftp site.
The compressed tar file is wav_files_tobi_v3.tar.gz. This file is
huge. If you want to retrieve just a few files by name, click
here
instead.
...
0.4. Future editions and a disclaimer
If you have comments on this Labelling Guide -- particularly, if you
have suggestions for improvements or better example utterances you would
like to give to us -- we would be very grateful if you would direct the
commments to us at:
e-mail:tobi@ling.ohio-state.edu
other mail:
The ToBI labelling system was originally developed to cover the three
most widely used varieties of spoken English -- namely, general American,
standard Australian, and southern British English. We do not claim to cover
other varieties. Indeed, we have already determined that ToBI proper does
not adequately cover many other British varieties such as the Glasgow dialect,
and modified variants need to be developed by users who want to use it
in transcribing utterances in these other dialects. By the same token,
we must stress that ToBI was not intended to cover any language other than
English, although we endorse the adoption of the basic principles in developing
transcriptions systems for other languages, particularly languages that
are typologically similar to English. More general comments about using
the ToBI system for other dialects of English or about adapting ToBI labelling
principles to develop comparable systems for the transcription of other
languages may also be addressed to the tobi e-mail address listed above
for forwarding to appropriate interested members of the larger ToBI group.
EXERCISE <<
ToBI Labelling Guide, c/o Mary Beckman
This e-mail address is also the place to send us your e-mail address if
you want to be added to our list of "subscribers" to be notified of any
future editions of the Labelling Guide.
Ohio State University, Linguistics Dept.
222 Oxley Hal, 1712 Neil Ave.
Columbus, OH 43210-1298 USA