In this paper, we offer an alternative to ToBI, the current de facto standard for machine-readable labelling of English prosody. We have three reasons for arguing that an alternative is needed. Firstly, the ToBI tone inventory is not maximally constrained; it appears to be difficult for transcribers to reach high inter-transcriber agreement scores for tone labels. Secondly, the growing demand for prosodically labelled data from non-standard varieties of English suggests a need for a transparent comparative transcription system. ToBI was not designed for this purpose. Thirdly, the low inter-transcriber agreement scores for ToBI suggest that the system is not as easy to apply as it may at first appear. In the present paper, we describe an alternative: the IViE system (Intonational Variation in English). We describe the structure of IViE and discuss its application with examples.
Cite as: Grabe, E., Nolan, F., Farrar, K.J. (1998) IVie - a comparative transcription system for intonational variation in English. Proc. 5th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP 1998), paper 0099, doi: 10.21437/ICSLP.1998-583
@inproceedings{grabe98_icslp,
author={Esther Grabe and Francis Nolan and Kimberley J. Farrar},
title={{IVie - a comparative transcription system for intonational variation in English}},
year=1998,
booktitle={Proc. 5th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP 1998)},
pages={paper 0099},
doi={10.21437/ICSLP.1998-583}
}