What is this?

Contour Clustering gives you a graphical user interface to automatically get:
- time-series f0 measures
- interpolated, extrapolated, smoothed, and error-free f0 contours
- time-series intensity measures
- duration measures
- several speaker-correction methods
- several f0 contour representations (scaled, first derivative, principal components)
- cluster analyses on any of the chosen acoustic measures
- several clustering settings (distance metrics, linkage criteria)
- evaluations of the optimal number of clusters
- data (.csv) for further (manual) analysis, including graphs and tables

What Contour Clustering needs from you:
- a prosodic research question
- segmented speech (.wav/.mp3 and .textgrid)
- R and R Studio installed

Learn more

Download

Complete file package as zip:
2024-08 - current (changelog, old versions)

R-scripts (GUI requires R-studio):
~ contour clustering GUI (recommended) - 2024-08
- contour clustering no GUI - 2022-08

Praat script:
- time-series f0 measurements - 2022-04

Cite as:

Kaland, Constantijn. 2023. Contour clustering: A field-data-driven approach for documenting and analysing prototypical f0 contours. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 53(1), 159-188. doi:10.1017/S0025100321000049 [pdf]

Old versions

Complete file package as zip:
- 2024-02
- 2023-06
- 2023-05
- 2022-08
- 2022-04
- 2021-08
- 2021-03

Documentation

Manual:
~ manual for Praat-script and R-script (recommended)

Additional learning material:
- two-day workshop Methods @ LingLab [Day 1] [Day 2] [OSF repository] - 11-2023
- tutorial - 03-2021
- Papuan Malay scripted noun phrases (article section 2)
- Papuan Malay spontaneous phrases (article section 3) - datafile for tutorial
- Zhagawa scripted tone syllables (article section 4)

R packages:
data.table, dplyr, dtwclust, fda, ggdendro, ggplot2, graphics, Hmisc, Metrics, pracma, proxy, purrr, readr,
readtextgrid, scales, shiny, stats, stringr, TSdist, usedist, utils, wrassp, zoo

Cite as:

Kaland, Constantijn. 2023. Contour clustering: A field-data-driven approach for documenting and analysing prototypical f0 contours. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 53(1), 159-188. doi:10.1017/S0025100321000049 [pdf]

Languages

Contour clustering has been applied to the following languages:

Language Unit of analysis Paper(s)
American English phrases/words Kaland et al., 2024 Tatár et al., 2024 Albert et al., 2024
Steffman et al., 2024 Cole et al., 2023
Bardi phrases Babinski, 2022 Babinski & Bowern, 2022
Burarra phrases Babinski, 2022

Cantonese syllable rhymes Li et al., 2023

Dalabon phrases Babinski, 2022

German phrases Kaland & Ellison, 2023 Seeliger & Kaland, 2022
Gija phrases Babinski, 2022

Gunnartpa phrases Babinski, 2022

Gunwinggu phrases Babinski, 2022

Kayardild phrases Babinski, 2022

Kera'a words Kaland et al., 2021

Korean syllables Jeon et al., 2024

Kunbarlang phrases Babinski, 2022

Malak Malak phrases Babinski, 2022

Mandarin Chinese words Laméris et al., 2023

Murrinhpatha phrases Babinski, 2022

Muyu phrases Zahrer, 2024

Nasal phrases Hakim, 2024

Ngan’gi phrases Babinski, 2022

Papuan Malay (noun) phrases/words Kaland & Grice, 2024 Kaland & Ellison, 2023 Kaland, 2023
Patwin words Björklund, 2024

Punjabi hesitations Jabeen & Wagner, 2023

Wanyjirra phrases Babinski, 2022

Warlpiri phrases Babinski, 2022

Warnman phrases Babinski, 2022
Yan-nhangu phrases Babinski, 2022

Yidiny phrases Babinski, 2022

Zhagawa syllables Kaland & Ellison, 2023 Kaland, 2023

References

Cite as:
Kaland, Constantijn. 2023. Contour clustering: A field-data-driven approach for documenting and analysing prototypical f0 contours. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 53(1), 159-188. doi:10.1017/S0025100321000049 [pdf]

Also applied in:
Kaland, Constantijn; Steffman, Jeremy & Cole, Jennifer. 2024. K-means and hierarchical clustering of f0 contours. Proc. Interspeech 2024 (1520-1524). Kos, Greece. doi:10.21437/Interspeech.2024-181 [pdf]

Hakim, Jacob. 2024. Using role-playing tasks to document intonational tune prototypes in Nasal, an endangered language of Sumatra. Proc. Speech Prosody 2024 (1175-1179). Leiden, The Netherlands. doi:10.21437/SpeechProsody.2024-237 [pdf]

Zahrer, Alexander. 2024. Exploring natural speech intonation of an under-researched Papuan language. Proc. Speech Prosody 2024 (1095-1099). Leiden, The Netherlands. doi:10.21437/SpeechProsody.2024-221 [pdf]

Tatár, Csilla; Brennan, Jonathan R.; Krivokapić, Jelena & Keshet, Ezra. 2024. Examining melodiousness in sarcasm: wiggliness, spaciousness, and contour clustering. Proc. Speech Prosody 2024 (677-681). Leiden, The Netherlands. doi:10.21437/SpeechProsody.2024-137 [pdf]

Jeon, Hae-Sung; Kaland, Constantijn & Grice, Martine. 2024. Cluster analysis of Korean IP-final intonation. In Proc. Speech Prosody 2024 (1025-1029). Leiden, The Netherlands. doi:10.21437/SpeechProsody.2024-207 [pdf]

Albert, Aviad; Kaland, Constantijn; Ellison, T. Mark; Cangemi, Francesco; Winter, Bodo & Grice, Martine. 2024. Harvesting spontaneous speech data from digital reservoirs to study prosody. In Proceedings of the 19th Conference on Laboratory Phonology (LabPhon 19). [pdf]

Björklund, Anna. 2024. Automatic intonational contour clustering in Patwin. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, 9(1), 5713. doi:10.3765/plsa.v9i1.5713 [pdf]

Kaland, Constantijn & Grice, Martine. 2024. Exploring and explaining variation in phrase-final f0 movements in spontaneous Papuan Malay. Phonetica, 81(3). doi:10.1515/phon-2023-0031 [pdf]

Steffman, Jeremy; Cole, Jennifer & Shattuck-Hufnagel, Stefanie. 2024. Intonational categories and continua in American English rising nuclear tunes. Journal of Phonetics, 104(101310) . doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2024.101310 [pdf]

Li, Katrina Kechun; Nolan, Francis & Post, Brechtje. 2023. Clustering lexical tones with intonation variation. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI) (pp. 87-88). Chinese and Oriental Languages information Procesing Society. [pdf]

Seeliger, Heiko; Lützeler, Anne & Kaland, Constantijn. 2023. The perception of German wh-phrase-final intonation: a contour clustering evaluation. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI 2023) (pp. 10-14). Singapore. doi:10.21437/TAI.2023-3 [pdf]

Jabeen, Farhat & Wagner, Petra. 2023. Variability in hesitations in Punjabi semi-spontaneous narrative speech: An automatic clustering based analysis. Proc. Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS) Workshop 2023, 71-75. doi: 10.21437/DiSS.2023-15 [pdf]

Kaland, Constantijn. 2023. Intonation contour similarity: F0 representations and distance measures compared to human perception in two languages. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 154(1), 95–107. doi: 10.1121/10.0019850 [pdf]

Kaland, Constantijn & Ellison, T. Mark. 2023. Evaluating cluster analysis on f0 contours: An information theoretic approach on three languages. In R. Skarnitzl & J. Volín (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (pp. 3448–3452). Guarant International. [pdf]

Cole, Jennifer; Steffman, Jeremy; Shattuck-hufnagel, Stefanie & Tilsen, Sam. 2023. Hierarchical distinctions in the production and perception of nuclear tunes in American English. Laboratory Phonology, 14(1), 1–51. doi: 10.16995/labphon.9437 [pdf]

Laméris, Tim Joris; Li, Katrina Kechun & Post, Brechtje. 2023. Phonetic and Phono-Lexical Accuracy of Non-Native Tone Production by English-L1 and Mandarin-L1 Speakers. Language and Speech, 66(4). doi:10.1177/00238309221143719 [pdf]

Babinski, Sarah. 2022. Archival Phonetics & Prosodic Typology in Sixteen Australian Languages. PhD Thesis, Yale University. [pdf]

Seeliger, Heiko & Kaland, Constantijn. 2022. Boundary tones in German wh-questions and wh-exclamatives - a cluster-based approach. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2022 (pp. 27–31). Lisbon, Portugal. doi:10.21437/SpeechProsody.2022-6 [pdf]

Babinski, Sarah & Bowern, Claire. 2022. Automatic categorization of prosodic contours in Bardi. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 7(1) (pp. 5218). doi:10.3765/plsa.v7i1.5218 [pdf]

Kaland, Constantijn; Peck, Naomi; Ellison, T. Mark & Reinöhl, Uta. 2021. An initial exploration of the interaction of tone and intonation in Kera'a. Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI) (pp. 132-136). Sønderborg, Denmark. doi:10.21437/TAI.2021-27 [pdf]

Kaland, Constantijn. 2020. Contour clustering: a tool for exploring prototypical f0 patterns. Middag van de Fonetiek, Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetiek. Online oral presentation. abstract [pdf]

Contact

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