Speech prosody and remote experiments: a technical report

TL;DR

This technical report reviews remote recording methods for speech prosody data collection, evaluates their quality and impact on linguistic variables, and advocates for online platforms like Zencastr as practical solutions for remote experiments.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of remote recording tools for prosodic data and recommends Zencastr as an effective platform for remote speech experiments.

Findings

Zencastr is identified as the most practical online recording platform.

Different recording setups impact pitch and noise levels.

Remote data collection can be viable with proper methodology.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we present a review of different recording options for gathering prosodic data in the event that fieldwork is impracticable (e.g. due to pandemics). Under this light, we mimic a long-distance reading task experiment using different software and hardware synchronously. In order to evaluate the employed methodologies, we extract noise levels and frequency manipulation of the recordings. Subsequently, we examine the impact of the different recordings onto linguistic variables, such as the pitch curves and values. We also include a discussion on experimental practicalities. After balancing these factors, we decree an online platform, Zencastr, as the most affordable and practical for acoustic data collection. Secondly, we want to open up a debate on the most optimal remote methodology that researchers on speech prosody can deploy.