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I have a WAV file contains a subject speech. The subject speaks a sentence once at a time, then a short period of silent appears. I'm interested to analyze the phonemes of that speech and what time each phoneme occurs. For instance, I am looking for something like this:

6.5-6.8 'AE'
6.8-7.0 'NG'

Is there any software supports such a thing?

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  • Presumably the language in question is English, right??
    – user6726
    Commented Feb 14, 2018 at 1:36
  • @user6726 for sure
    – cyberic
    Commented Feb 14, 2018 at 1:37
  • Not just English, but it would need to know the particular accent in order to turn phones into phonemes.
    – curiousdannii
    Commented Feb 14, 2018 at 3:53
  • I suppose you're looking for a program that will automatically separate a WAV file into segments, but it you just want a display and labeling program that an expert spectrogram reader uses, Praat is the usual tool.
    – user6726
    Commented Feb 14, 2018 at 5:49
  • Possible duplicate of How to convert a string to their IPA equivalent Commented Feb 14, 2018 at 15:49

2 Answers 2

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Broadly, you're describing the entire (not-fully-solved) problem of automatic speech recognition/automatic transcription.

However, if you have the text of the sentences (e.g., if the recordings are scripted, or if you've manually transcribed their speech), then the problem is more tractable: you want 'forced alignment'.

A popular software option for that is the Penn Phonetics Lab Forced Aligner (available at http://web.sas.upenn.edu/phonetics-lab/facilities/). There is documentation, but you might also do a web search for tutorials and guides.

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  • The software you mentioned is perfect if you have the text. I validated its output using Praat software (aurally and visually) and it was quite accurate.
    – cyberic
    Commented Dec 19, 2018 at 22:50
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Praat is the main program used to analyze sound data for phonetics research. It's available for free at the link. You can use the program to add markers and replay snippets, as well as analyze formants.

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