Introducing Autophon: Automatic phonetic annotation of Nordic languages

This talk introduces the beta web application autophon.se that simultaneously (1) offers new phonetic annotation models for the three main Nordic languages and (2) houses these models within a user-friendly OS-agnostic web interface. The contextual background for this tool is that time-stamped phonetic annotations are required for any acoustic-phonetic analysis. For analyses of systematic sound change, extraordinarily large amounts of such annotations are required. For the Nordic languages, most such annotations are still executed manually due to a technological gap in so-called "forced alignment" technology. Manual annotation is both time-consuming and expensive, so this has limited acoustic-phonetic work on spontaneous speech in our region. The app presented in this talk is a preliminary step in closing that gap. Although it is in beta, autophon will be showcased, and I will elicit feedback to help pave a clearer way for further refinement and development. An additional goal of the talk is to make colleagues aware of a tool that – even in beta form – may already be useful for their current research endeavors.