Annotation Proa new software tool for annotation of linguistic and paralinguistic features

This paper describes the design, development and preliminary verification of a new tool created for the purpose of annotation of spoken language recordings. The software extends the potential of a typical multi-layer annotation system with a new component based on the graphical representation of feature space that supports annotation of continuous and noncategorial features. Apart from the annotation options, the program provides a flexible perception experiment framework aimed especially at testing hypotheses related to continuous and non-categorial features. The tool was initially tested and first applied for the annotation of a speech corpus composed of conversational and emotionally marked speech data within a larger project confessed to speaker characterisation and recognition.