The ToBI Transcription System: Conventions, Strengths, and Challenges

Abstract

IntroductionDecisions regarding what information a prosodic transcription should include vary depending on the goal of transcription. For example, the goal may be to (i) represent the distinctive features of the prosodic system of a language, (ii) learn how prosodic categories are phonetically realized and how variable the categories are, (iii) train machines to achieve better synthesis and recognition of human speech, (iv) compare prosody across dialects or across languages, or (v) develop a corpus to explore vari ous linguistic phenomena related to prosody. Thus, prosodic transcriptions may include annotations of prosodic properties that are meaningful at the level of phonology, phonetics, or even lower (i.e., the implementation of phonetic rules for a specific language), or they can be nondistinctive but still categorical in nature, capturing prosodic properties not specific to a certain language.ToBI, which stands for tones and break indices, is the most well-known annotation system for prosody at the level of phonology. It aims to transcribe the phonological properties of intonation (the "tones" part) and the perceived degree of juncture between words (the "break indices" part), which together represent the prominence patterns and prosodic structure of an utterance. Thus, the tone labels used in the ToBI system of a specific language are meant to represent under lying tonal targets that are both meaningful to native speakers of the language and systematic and consistent across native speakers of the language variety.The ToBI system was originally designed for transcribing the intonation and prosodic structure of En glish utterances (

A Roadmap for Technological Innovation in Multimodal Communication Research

“…Second, investigating the prosody-gesture link (e.g., [48,102,175]) requires an analysis of prosodic categories like pitch accents and/or boundary tones. Usually, this type of analysis relies on annotating prosody according to a ToBI system [74] of a given language, which is most conveniently applied in a speech processing tool like Praat. In addition, Praat allows for many kinds of acoustic-phonetic analyses.…”

Clause types, intonation and stranded embedded clauses

“…In such contexts, an SEC is accompanied by the characteristic boundary tone LHL% (e.g. Jun 2000;Shin 2017).…”

ToBI and beyond: Phonetic intonation of Seoul Korean ani in Korean Intonation Corpus (KICo)*

“…The TOnes and Break Indices (ToBI) convention serves as an annotation system designed for labeling prosody at the phonology level (Jun, 2022). Initially developed between 1991 and 1994 for annotating databases of spoken Mainstream American English (Silverman et al, 1992), it has since been adapted for various languages, including Seoul Korean (Jun, 2000).…”

“…Beckman & Pierrehumbert, 1986), ToBI conventions utilize binary level tones, High (H) and Low (L), to annotate pitch accents and edge tones (Beckman et al, 2005). With the aim of comprehending the phonological properties of intonation, ToBI tone labels are devised to represent underlying tonal targets that are systematically meaningful across native speakers of the language variety (Jun, 2022). K-ToBI (Beckman& Jun, 1996;Jun, 2000), 1 the ToBI convention tailored for Seoul Korean, stands out due to its inclusion of the phonetic tone tier in its third version (Jun, 2000).…”