textgRid

The software application Praat can be used to annotate waveform data (e.g., to mark intervals of interest or to label events). These annotations are stored in a Praat TextGrid object, which consists of Interval Tiers and Point Tiers. An Interval Tier consists of sequential (i.e., not overlapping) labeled intervals. A Point Tier consists of labeled events. The textgRid package provides S4 classes, generics, and methods for accessing annotations stored in Praat TextGrid objects.

Installation

To install the current released version from CRAN:

install.packages('textgRid')

To install the current development version from Github:

devtools::install_github('textgRid', username = 'patrickreidy')

Examples

Read the contents of a .TextGrid file.

textgrid <- TextGrid(system.file('extdata', 'myExample.TextGrid', 
                                 package = 'textgRid'))

Find all labeled intervals or points on a given tier.

# Find all labeled intervals on the $Words IntervalTier.
findIntervals(textgrid$Words)
#   Index StartTime EndTime  Label
# 1     2         1       3 word.1
# 2     4         6       9 word.2

# Find all labeled intervals on the $Phones IntervalTier.
findIntervals(textgrid$Phones)
#   Index StartTime EndTime    Label
# 1     2      1.00    1.50 phone.1a
# 2     3      1.50    2.50 phone.1b
# 3     4      2.50    3.00 phone.1c
# 4     6      6.00    6.75 phone.2a
# 5     7      6.75    7.25 phone.2b
# 6     8      7.25    8.25 phone.2c
# 7     9      8.25    9.00 phone.2d

# Find all intervals associated with word.2 on the $Phones IntervalTier.
findIntervals(textgrid$Phones, pattern = '2')
#   Index StartTime EndTime    Label
# 1     6      6.00    6.75 phone.2a
# 2     7      6.75    7.25 phone.2b
# 3     8      7.25    8.25 phone.2c
# 4     9      8.25    9.00 phone.2d

# Alternatively...
findIntervals(
  tier = textgrid$Phones,
  from = findIntervals(textgrid$Words, pattern = 'word.2')$StartTime,
  to   = findIntervals(textgrid$Words, pattern = 'word.2')$EndTime
)
#   Index StartTime EndTime    Label
# 1     6      6.00    6.75 phone.2a
# 2     7      6.75    7.25 phone.2b
# 3     8      7.25    8.25 phone.2c
# 4     9      8.25    9.00 phone.2d

# Find all labeled points on the $Events PointTier.
findPoints(textgrid$Events)
#   Index Time      Label
# 1     1 6.75  voicingOn
# 2     2 8.25 voicingOff

Coerce a TextGrid object to a data.frame.

as.data.frame(textgrid)
#    TierNumber TierName     TierType Index StartTime EndTime      Label
# 1           1    Words IntervalTier     2      1.00    3.00     word.1
# 2           1    Words IntervalTier     4      6.00    9.00     word.2
# 3           2   Phones IntervalTier     2      1.00    1.50   phone.1a
# 4           2   Phones IntervalTier     3      1.50    2.50   phone.1b
# 5           2   Phones IntervalTier     4      2.50    3.00   phone.1c
# 6           2   Phones IntervalTier     6      6.00    6.75   phone.2a
# 7           2   Phones IntervalTier     7      6.75    7.25   phone.2b
# 8           2   Phones IntervalTier     8      7.25    8.25   phone.2c
# 9           2   Phones IntervalTier     9      8.25    9.00   phone.2d
# 10          3   Events    PointTier     1      6.75    6.75  voicingOn
# 11          3   Events    PointTier     2      8.25    8.25 voicingOff

Write a TextGrid object to a Praat-compatible .TextGrid file.

writeTextGrid(textgrid, path = 'test_out.TextGrid')

Read a TextGrid that contains non-ASCII characters.

# Guess the encoding.
nonASCII <- TextGrid(system.file('extdata', 'nonASCII.TextGrid', package = 'textgRid'),
                     encoding = NULL)

# Or, explicitly provide the (correct) encoding.
nonASCII <- TextGrid(system.file('extdata', 'nonASCII.TextGrid', package = 'textgRid'),
                     encoding = "UTF-16BE")

# An error occurs if the provided encoding is incorrect.
TextGrid(system.file('extdata', 'nonASCII.TextGrid', package = 'textgRid'),
                     encoding = "UTF-8")

# Coerce the TextGrid to a data.frame.
as.data.frame(nonASCII)[1:2, ]
#   TierNumber TierName     TierType Index StartTime EndTime                      Label
# 1          1  Bengali IntervalTier     1         0       1   চকলেট এবং চিনাবাদাম মাখন
# 2          2  Chinese IntervalTier     1         0       1             巧克力和花生醬

# Non-ASCII characters can be used as patterns in searches.
findIntervals(nonASCII$Bengali, pattern = "চকলেট")
#   Index StartTime EndTime                    Label
# 1     1         0       1 চকলেট এবং চিনাবাদাম মাখন

Details on S4 classes

The textgRid package defines four S4 classes, whose slots and accessors are described in the tables below.

Tier

IntervalTier (inherits from Tier)

PointTier (inherits from Tier)

TextGrid