Extract vowels using TextGrids
This function will automatically extract vowels from a larger sound file based on information in TextGrids. It can do this for one file or for an entire folder of files at once. To use this, go to "Fast Track > Tools" in Praat, and then select the option to "Extract vowels with TextGrids. The following menu will pop up.
When the options form is generated a Strings object called "vowels" will be placed into your Praat objects window. This object contains all of the vowels in the commonly-used ARPAbet symbol set (AA AE AH AO AW AX AY EH ER EY IH IX IY OW OY UH UW UX). All segments with labels included in this Strings object will be extracted from the sound. If you only want a subset of vowels, leave only those in the String object before running the function. If you want to extract segments with other labels, add these to the Strings object.
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Sound folder: The path to a folder containing wav files.
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TextGrid folder: The path to a folder containing TextGrid files. Only wav files with corresponding TextGrid files will be processed.
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Folder: this is the output folder for all vowel files and CSV files.
All three folders can be the same, or users can use three separate folders for the sake of organization.
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Segment tier: Which tier has segmental information? This is mandatory.
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Word tier: Which tier has word information? This is optional and ignored if equal to 0.
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Segment tier: Do you want to collect comments from some specific tier? This is optional and ignored if equal to 0.
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Select stress: Collection of vowels can be limited to those with primary or secondary stress.
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Words to skip: Vowels from any words entered here will be skipped (must be an exact match). This let's 'frame' words be skipped (e.g., 'the', 'please say').
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Buffer: Vowels can be 'padded' with an extra bit of sound to allow for analysis right up to the edge of segmental boundaries. Please se preparing sounds for more information. If you set this to 0, you will lose the 25 ms on either edge of the segment.
The outputs are:
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Sound files: wav files named filename_N, where N is a four digit number (i.e., 0001, 0002) associated with each vowel. Vowels are numbered sequentially from start to finish and skipped vowels are not numbered. Numbers begin at 0000 for each file.
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CSV files: Named filename_segmentation_info.csv. These contain information about the context of the extracted sounds, vowel durations, stress, comments, and more.
