The objective of this project is to prepare an atlas of the sound patterns in Kentucky English. The atlas will trace the progress of ongoing mergers and shifts in Kentucky English and will define regional speech boundaries in Kentucky on the basis of phonological features. This website is being developed to reflect the work being done on the project in Morehead State University's linguistics lab.
Currently, the website comprises two interactive web applications for the analysis of acoustic phonetic data and speech data collected in field interviews in each of the five regions of the commonwealth of Kentucky, which may be accessed via the navigation links on the left. The web applications provide a platform independent mechanism for data analysis and data sharing among sociolinguists investigating language variation and change. The speech samples preserve a picture of non-urban speech in the commonwealth of Kentucky at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Links
Here are some other sites related to phonetics and computer analysis of phonetic data, including some free, high-quality software applications.- Plotnik - An analysis tool for producing graphs and performing statistical tests.
- Praat - An analysis tool for working directly with sound files.
- Akustyk - A plug-in for Praat that significantly expands its capabilities.