Basic and advanced Praat Scripting Kyuchul Yoon Division of English Kyungnam University Seoul National University, Linguistics Department, 2006. 12.09

Praat Scripting Language Where to Get Help A Brief Look at a Sample Script Basic Topics Advanced Topics Hands-on Activities Scripting Examples

Where to Get Help Built-in manual “Help” menu of Praat (“search” button) Official Praat homepage www.praat.org Discussion group http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/praat-users/ Scripts from other people “Files” menu from the discussion group http://ling.osu.edu/~kyoon/scripts/praat/ http://ling.osu.edu/~welby/praat.html

A Brief Look at a Sample Script

Basic Topics Looks of Praat What Praat can do What is an object? (.TextGrid) How to run a script (example) Language elements Comments, continuation lines, white space Variables, arrays, formulas Jumps, loops

Basic Topics: Looks of Praat Windows: Praat objects, Praat picture, Editor Menus: Praat, New, Read, Write Command buttons (context-sensitive) Activated when an object is selected Changes depending on the type of an object (e.g. Sound) …Help, Edit, Play, Draw…, Query-, Modify-, Annotate- Analyse: Periodicity-, Spectrum-, Formants & LPC-, …, To Intensity… Manipulate: To Manipulation… Synthesize: Convert-, Filter-, Combine sounds- Command buttons (fixed) Rename…, Copy…, Info, Remove, Inspect

Basic Topics: What Praat can do General functions Sound recording Analyses (spectral, pitch, formant, intensity) Annotation Manipulation (pitch, duration, intensity, formant) Specialized functions Voice analysis (jitter, shimmer, noise) Listening experiments Filtering Synthesis (source-filter, articulatory) Learning (neural networks, OT learning) Statistics (multi-dimensional scaling, etc.)

Basic Topics: What is an object? (.TextGrid) A segment of computer memory Contains a set of data in the Praat program Resides in the Praat object window (e.g. sample.wav) e.g.) Sound sample Is NOT a file! (Must be saved!) Needs to be clicked to be selected (Shift, Ctrl, dragging) Types of objects Sound, Spectrum, Spectrogram, TextGrid, Pitch, Formant, Intensity, Manipulation

Basic Topics: What is an object? (.TextGrid) TextGrid object Created with a sound object selected Annotate- To TextGrid… Used for annotation (segmentation and labeling) Consists of a number of tiers Two kinds of tiers: Interval tier: a connected sequence of labeled intervals with boundaries in between Point tier: a sequence of labeled points

Basic Topics: What is an object? (.TextGrid) Examining an object through Query… Gives you information about the selected object Information is displayed by default in the Info window Query results can be used to put information into a variable myStartTime = Get start time myPointLabel$ = Get label of point… 1 1 Modifying an object through Modify… Query results can be used to modify an object, e.g. TextGrid Set point text… 1 1 ‘myPointLabel$’

Basic Topics: How to run a script (example) What is a script? An executable text with menu commands and action commands Praat ==> New/Open Praat script In the script editor, Run ==> Run Edit ==> Paste history in the script editor Records all the menu/action commands Can be used to copy/paste recorded commands Constants could be replaced with variables Clear history to erase all the earlier commands A good source for beginners!

Basic Topics: How to run a script (example) Paste history Read from file... D:\recording\2syllAP-LHa.wav To TextGrid... "phonological phonetic" phonetic plus Sound 2syllAP-LHa Edit select TextGrid 2syllAP-LHa Insert boundary... 1 0.5 Set interval text... 1 1 test ================================================================= fileLocation$ = "D:\recording\2syllAP-LHa.wav" uTonesTierName$ = "phonological" sTonesTierName$ = "phonetic" uTonesTier = 1 intervalText$ = "test" Read from file... 'fileLocation$' Rename… soundObj To TextGrid... "'uTonesTierName$' 'sTonesTierName$'" 'sTonesTierName$' Rename… textgridObj plus Sound soundObj pause Insert a sample interval? select TextGrid textgridObj Insert boundary... uTonesTier 0.5 Set interval text... uTonesTier 1 'intervalText$' Now a script!

Basic Topics: Language elements Comments, continuation lines, white space All white spaces (and tabs) at line beginnings are ignored You can use indenting to make your script readable (tabs preferred) sum = 0 for i to 10 for j to 10 sum = sum + i*j endfor endfor pause The total sum is ‘sum’ Comments lines start with # or ! or ; (# preferred) You can split long command lines into multiple lines using … myStringVariable$ = left$(myMainSentence$, (lengthOfUtterance- …lengthOfRightWord))

Basic Topics: Language elements Variables, arrays, formulas Numeric variables, variable = formula e.g.) lengthOfSentence = 10 String variables (end in a dollar sign), variable$ = string e.g.) sentenceToProcess$ = “Praat rules” Predefined string variables: newline$, tab$, shellDirectory$ Variable substitution (in between single quotes), ‘variable$’ e.g.) echo The number of characters is ‘lengthOfSentence’ e.g.) Try ‘lengthOfSentence:2’ Array variables: simulated with quote substitution e.g.) for j from 1 to 5 square‘j’ = j*j endfor square1 = 1, square2 = 4, square3 = 9, square4 = 16, square5 = 25

Basic Topics: Language elements Jumps, loops for/endfor ################################################# throws = 0 repeat sum = randomInteger(1,6) + randomInteger(1,6) throws = throws + 1 until sum = 12 echo Took me ‘throws’ trials ################################################# throws = 1 sum = randomInteger(1,6) + randomInteger(1,6) while sum <> 12 throws = throws + 1 sum = randomInteger(1,6) + randomInteger(1,6) endwhile echo Took me ‘throws’ trials

Advanced Topics Arguments to commands/scripts Object selection Calling system commands Info window, user interaction, file handling Scripting in an editor window

Advanced Topics Arguments to commands/scripts form/endform keywords form Types of script arguments natural numOfSentences_(positive_whole_number) 337 integer amplitudeSteps_(whole_number) -2000 real factorOfZoomOut_(real_number) -3.5 positive factorOfZoomIn_(positive_real_number) 4.7 comment A line with any text word targetWord_(string_without_spaces) school sentence targetSentence_(any_short_string) my school text targetText_(variableName_not_shown) my school bus boolean trueOrFalse_(with_a_checkbox) 1 choice myChoice_(with_a_radiobox) 1 button choice 1 button choice 2 button choice 3 comment Choose any color optionmenu Color: 2 option Red option Green endform

Advanced Topics Object selection How to select objects from your script select Sound hello1 plus Sound hello2 minus Sound hello2 select all minus Sound hello2 Rename… greeting1 Remove ################## fullFileName$ = “male02-Seoul-32yrs.wav” Read from file… ‘fullFileName$’ filePrefix$ = fullFileName$ - “.wav” newTextGridName$ = filePrefix$ + “.TextGrid”

Advanced Topics Calling system commands Call system (DOS/Unix/Linux) commands from a script directoryName$ = “resultFolder” system_nocheck mkdir ‘directoryName$’ will create a new subfolder in the current folder

Advanced Topics Info window, user interaction, files Writing to the Info window from a script… echo text, clearinfo, print text, printtab, printline text A sample script clearinfo printline Minimum Maximum minValue = 1 maxValue = 10 print ‘minValue’ printtab print ‘maxValue’

Advanced Topics Info window, user interaction, files Messages to the user exit text : to stop the execution of the script with the text message nowarn Write to WAV file… hello.wav : prevents warning messages, e.g. about clipped sound samples noprogress To Pitch… 0 75 500 : prevents from showing a progress window nocheck Remove : causes the script to continue even if there’s nothing to remove pause text : temporarily halts a Praat script. Continue & Stop buttons. Can be used to accept user actions which will be stored in variables e.g.) User selecting a particular section of a sound object in an editor startOfSelection = Get start of selection endOfSelection = Get end of selection

Advanced Topics Info window, user interaction, files File handling Reading an existing file, e.g. hello.wav, sentences.txt Read from file… C:/sound/hello.wav Read Strings from raw text file… C:/text/sentences.txt Creating a new text file in the current folder, e.g. result.txt fileappend result.txt Hello world!’newline$’ fileappend result.txt I am back! Deleting an existing file filedelete C:/sound/hello.wav Getting a list of file names of a particular folder Create Strings as file list… fileListObj C:/sound/*.wav The object fileListObj has a list of filename strings in one column With for/endfor, repeated actions can be taken

Advanced Topics Scripting in an editor window In a Praat script editor/endeditor required In an editor script Only endeditor is required editor Sound soundObj #do your stuff here cursorPosition = Get cursor Select... cursorPosition-0.02 cursorPosition+0.02 Extract sound selection (time from 0) endeditor To Spectrum (fft) Edit

Hands-on Activities Write a script that will help measure the duration of a user-selected segment for all of the .wav files in a folder Keywords to use: form/endform Create Strings as file list… for/endfor Edit pause fileappend

Hands-on Activities # Put variables here form Parameter settings word inFolder_(with_sounds) demo-folder word outFile_(to_be_created) measurements.txt endform # Make a list of files in the folder Create Strings as file list... fileListObj ‘inFolder$’/*.wav Sort numOfFiles = Get number of strings pause ‘numOfFiles’ files identified. Continue? # Loop through each file for iFile to numOfFiles select Strings fileListObj fileName$ = Get string... iFile pause Opening the file ‘fileName$’ Read from file... ‘inFolder$’/’fileName$’ Rename... soundObj Edit editor Sound soundObj pause Select the target segment targetDuration = Get selection length endeditor Remove fileappend ‘outFile$’ ‘fileName$’‘tab$’‘targetDuration:2’‘newline$’ endfor Remove all # End of script

Scripting Examples Scripts for (1) Prosody swapping (2) Speech corpus searching (3) K-ToBI labeling