A page for notes and materials for Iha. [WALS|OLAC]
2011-12-07 MDWe realized later in the day that we were spending too much time on individual items, that it makes more sense to delay resolving issues about particular elicited tokens since it later may become much clearer how to resolve them after we have more data.2011-12-08 KJAs decided yesterday Team Iha split into two groups; five eliciting new forms and four reviewing the recordings from yesterday. In the reviewing group it was noted that it is vital to keep a record of the order of elicitation in the compressed recording. Also, some new forms for previously elicited words were produced, and should have been noted in the recording session. On 7/12/11 we used a headset microphone which worked well in getting a clear recording of Simon, but unfortunately did not pick up the number corresponding to the database, English or Indonesian glosses. Despite difficulty finding words in the recording, the reviewing group listened back over words of interest which we had transcribed as having a L.H contour. Upon listening again it sounded perhaps to be a stress issue with words which have the second syllable stressed appearing to have higher in pitch on that syllable. That is to say, all words had no higher pitch than that found on the first syllable. The most right syllable consistently had falling pitch, sometimes HL and sometimes ML – a distinction Praat showed clearly and something we will be looking into further. Meanwhile, the elicitation group tried two frames for the nouns elicited on 7/12/11. The first frame was in a verb phrase ‘he sees X’, the second with a locative. There was some concern of the locative frame – will we get a consistent form? – but in the end it worked fine, though very little new tone related information was retrieved. The morning group recording was conducted almost exclusively in Indonesian, so we will try to ensure there is a non-Indonesian speaker in the elicitation group each time to make sure there are English as well as Indonesian glosses on the recordings. There appears to be some rightward effect in the verb context regarding the pitch of the first syllable of the verb. The ‘he sees X’ frame – 3SG N V : (where F is ‘fall’, either HL or ML) H.H <H(.H).F> H.L H.H <H(.H).F> L.L With the second pitch pattern occurring with words ‘nose’ and ‘finger’, both multisyllabic words which should be looked into regarding their syllable structure. The locative frame – N LOC <H> L All words in the locative frame were monosyllabic. Before lunch the groups reconvened to debrief and discuss how to continue. Afternoon In the afternoon the morning’s recordings were listened to and we continued eliciting the nouns we have in the same frames. The reviewing group began looking at our data in Praat. In the elicitation When it became clear that the locative form was too unnatural there was a complete change of direction to looking into numerals. There was some confusion over a potential H.H pitch on ‘five’ which disappeared on later repetitions to conform to the standard H followed by a falling pitch. At this stage Simon started demonstrating the pitch of words by using nonsense words – ‘na’ – to more clearly demonstrate the pitch of the word, abstracting away from the segments. We also began offering a numeral twice with different tone patterns, asking Simon to indicate which he preferred. While that is not alone conclusive that there is tone in Iha, it did add to the evidence for tone in this language. After recording a compressed version of the afternoon’s elicitation Mark who was sitting in on our group quickly ran through some locative paradigms with ‘on’, ‘to’, ‘from’, ‘on top of’ and ‘under’ various nouns. It sounded as though the ‘on top of’ locative frame had a higher pitch in the middle of the frame, though we will need to closely listen to the recordings. A concern: because we do not always capture the tone on the first instance of the form – sometimes we are concerned with the segments, sometimes just not properly focussed – the tone changes with later repetitions from a natural speed and tone to exaggerated syllables (especially for compounds) and loss of originally perceived pitch to the fall back H.F. Also, another worrying issue is that we may be getting pidgin forms in our frames with Simon saying that Iha is ‘hard’ and will help us by giving us the easier version. At this stage we are unsure if tone is lexical or something else. That is if we are convinced Iha is tonal at all! To-do: Start eliciting verbs – taking particular notice of the first syllable’s pitch Record more nouns – disyllabic and tri-syllabic if possible Try some other paradigms for nouns, and verbs is possible Continue Praat analysis Compare words with same number of syllables but different stress patterns 2011-12-09-Bert- We are still looking out for unambiguous contrast. A new approach was to offer the members of a possible minimal pair for interpretation by the speaker - is he consistent in translation. However, it was not a like-with-like comparison. We felt this type of performance testing is a promising way to evaluate hypotheses. - We are working in two different groups, working separately on elicitation and on annotation, using different frames. We realized after the fact that we have been using different frame labels in the TextGrid annotation. The lesson is that - as elicitation develops from citation into a wide range of contexts - we should have developed a frame tag list, so that e.g. noun+verb is labeled "F1" consistently. - Yesterday's recordings on locative paradigms turned out to be less useful in processing and transcription. It was felt that the speaker was rushed during elicitation. We should have been more attentive during elicitation to get a natural rhythm, by coaching and monitoring the speaker. - Unexpected effect of the headset mic: it picks up the speaker's breathing quite strongly. it is not a major problem: people don't breathe while they talk. Iha Daily Report for December 12, 2011Today was “swap day.” With two people (a different two each hour) missing from our crew at all times, we were not able to get as much done as we normally do. This was mostly because we allowed the two people who swapped in each time to mostly just observe, although a couple of them did fill needed roles on a couple of occasions. |