Speech data acquisition: the underestimated challenge

Oliver Niebuhr (1) , Alexis Michaud (2)

1 CAU - Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel = Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel = Université Christian-Albrechts de Kiel
2 Speech Communication

The second half of the 20th century was the dawn of information technology; and we now live in the digital age. Experimental studies of prosody develop at a fast pace, in the context of an "explosion of evidence" (Janet Pierrehumbert, Speech Prosody 2010, Chicago). The ease with which anyone can now do recordings should not veil the complexity of the data collection process, however. This article aims at sensitizing students and scientists from the various fields of speech and language research to the fact that speech-data acquisition is an underestimated challenge. Eliciting data that reflect the communicative processes at play in language requires special precautions in devising experimental procedures and a fundamental understanding of both ends the elicitation process, speaker and recording facilities. The article compiles basic information on each of these requirements and recapitulates some pieces of practical advice, drawing many examples from prosody studies, a field where the thoughtful conception of experimental protocols is especially crucial.

Mots clés: data acquisition; data elicitation; spoken language; speech recording; experimental procedures; experimental tasks; experimental phonetics

Domaines: Linguistique

Oliver Niebuhr, Alexis Michaud. Speech data acquisition: the underestimated challenge. 2014. ⟨halshs-01026295v1⟩