SAMPROSA (SAM PROSodic Alphabet): symbol set

 

SAMPROSA ASCII Definition

Local tone H 72 High pitch

L 76 Low pitch

T 84 Top pitch (extreme H)

B 66 Bottom pitch (extreme L)

M 77 Mid pitch

+ 43 Higher pitch

++ 43,43 Much higher pitch

+- 43,45 Peak (upward-downward)

- 45 Lower pitch

-- 45,45 Much lower pitch

-+ 45,43 Trough (downward-upward)

^ 94 Upstep

^^ 94,94 Wide upstep

! 33 Downstep

!! 33,33 Wide downstep

= or > or S 61 62 or 83 Level or same tone Global tone: from Local and Nuclear tone repertoires Terminal tone: from Local and Nuclear tone repertoires

Nuclear tone - 45 Level tone (before tone group boundary)

' or / or R 39 47 or 82 Rising tone

` or \ or F 96 92 or 70 Falling tone

`' (etc.) 96,39 (etc.) Fall-rise

'` (etc.) 39,96 (etc.) Rise-fall

Length : 58 Segment length mark

Stress " 34 Primary stress

% 37 Secondary stress

Pause ... 46,46,46 Silence

Boundary $ 36 Syllable boundary

# 35 Word boundary

| 124 Tone group boundary (non-directional)

[ 91 Tone group boundary (left)

] 93 Tone group boundary (right)

Metasymbols - 45 Separator (the underscore, _, ASCII 95, may replace this owing to ambiguity with level tone)

* 42 Conjunctor

For the full description see Document No. SAM-UCL-037: Wells, J., Barry, W., Grice, M., Fourcin, A., Gibbon, D., 1992, Standard Computer-Compatible Transcription. ESPRIT project 2589 (SAM). SAMPROSA was proposed by Dafydd Gibbon in consultation with colleagues in the SAM project and elsewhere.

SAMPROSA is designed as a superset of a number of symbol sets used to denote phonological and phonetic prosodic categories, for application in multi-tier transcription and representation systems. In such transcriptions and representations, independent parallel symbolic representations are made of an utterance (a signal) using different segmental or prosodic criteria. The parallel symbolic representations may be related in two different ways:

1. Association: Phonological rules are defined which assign prosodic units to segmental units as tags at a linguistic level of definition.
2. Synchronisation: The symbols may be assigned to the signal time function as labels or annotations; the temporal relations between symbols are then given empirically (extensionally) via their position with respect to the signal.

The main practical applications for SAMPROSA are in the areas of

• prosodic transcription for linguistic purposes, and
• prosodic labelling in speech technology and experimental phonetic research