The Thesaurus of Acoustic Phonetic Terms is a controlled vocabulary that contains terms that are central to the field of acoustic phonetics and also shows how these terms are related to one another. The target audience are those with a minimal understanding of phonetics who seek a deeper knowledge of acoustic phonetics in particular. It could also be applied in the capacity of an indexing language for a database of periodical articles and other literature on the subject. Although the scope right now is limited to acoustic phonetics, in the future it may be expanded to include all of phonetics. Right now the thesaurus is in its pilot phase waiting to be tested by a select group of users familiar with acoustic phonetics made up of phoneticians and speech & hearing scientists.
Terms and their various relationships to one another were derived according to the Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Thesauri (ANSI/NISO Z39.19-1993). The following sections describe how this standard was followed.
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Scope of Terms (3.1) |
| The Thesaurus of Acoustic Phonetic Terms contains single and multi-word terms for single concepts formulated in accordance with sections 3 and 4 of ANSI/ NISO Z39.19-1993. Terms may be combined post-coordinately in order to formulate more complex concepts. General peripheral terms have been included as needed (e.g. males, age differences). Where necessary, terms more often associated with articulatory and auditory phonetics have also been added when they are needed to support particular concepts within acoustic phonetics. For example, terms such as vocal tract and its component sections oral cavity, nasal cavity, and pharyngeal cavity are all included as preferred terms. However, parts of these sections like the vocal folds and the glottis appear only as USE terms for pharyngeal cavity. If the scope of the thesaurus were to be expanded to include a comprehensive picture of articulatory phonetics, terms like vocal folds and glottis would then be included as preferred terms. As it stands, these terms are too peripheral given the scope of the current project. |
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Scope Notes (3.2.2) |
| Scope notes for preferred terms are included in almost all cases except when they would not really provide any useful information or clarification (3.2.2). For example, the preferred term "speech" does not have a scope note. The abbreviation SN indicates scope note. |
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Types of Concepts (3.3) | ||||||||||||||||||||
| A faceted approach was taken in order to classify terminology. Types of concepts which occur in the thesaurus include:
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Grammatical Form of Descriptors (3.4) |
| The suggestions for the grammatical form of descriptors have been followed as close as possible. Prepositional noun phrases were generally avoided (3.4.1.2.2). However, manner of articulation and place of articulation appear as preferred terms according to both user and literary warrant. Although articulation point may be used to express place of articulation in some instances, it is not commonly used. Thus it is included as a non-preferred term even though it would be more syntactically appropriate. |
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Singular and Plural Forms (3.5) |
| The guidelines for singular and plural forms have been followed. As per the exception to plural count nouns (3.5.1.1) count nouns referring to body parts appear in the singular form (e.g. nasal cavity, nose). |
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Selection of Preferred Form (3.6) |
| Forms for terms were derived according to the principles of literary and user warrant following the criteria listed in section 3.6. Please see Resources for Term Collection for more information. |
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Capitalization (3.7.1) |
| Terms are presented in lower-case letters unless there it contains a proper noun that must be capitalized (e.g. discrete Fourier transforms). |
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Hyphens (3.7.2.2) |
| Hyphens are avoided whenever possible. For example, low pass filters rather than low-pass filters since removing the hyphen does not lead to ambiguity. |
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Compound Terms (4) |
| Compound forms appear only when they represent a single concept (e.g. speech signal distortion) and are supported by user and/or literary warrant. |
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The Equivalence Relationship (5.2) | ||||||
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Equivalence relationships are indicated by USE (which directs the user from a non-preferred term to the preferred term) and UF (which alerts the user to the existence of alternate, non-preferred terms). Some examples of specific equivalence relationships include:
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The Hierarchal Relationship (5.3) | ||||
| Both generic and whole part hierarchal relationships are present in the
thesaurus (mainly generic though). BT (broader term) is the label used
for the superordinate descriptor, while NT (narrower term) is the label used
for the subordinate descriptor. Here are a couple of
representative examples:
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The Associative Relationship (5.4) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| There are quite a few relationships between descriptors belonging to
different hierarchies (5.4.2). These reciprocal non-hierarchal
relationships are indicated in both records by the abbreviation RT (related
term). Differentia from dictionary definitions as well as relational
structures were used in identifying various associative relationships (Iyer
83). The following is a list of typical relational structures along with
examples:
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Typography (6.3.3) |
| Non-preferred terms are displayed in lightface italics, relationship indicators are capitalized (e.g. SN, BT), and preferred terms appear in boldface. |
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Filing (6.3.5) |
| Alphabetical characters are filed word-by-word (6.3.5.1). Numerals and Non-Alphanumeric characters are not used. |
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Alphabetical Listing (7.3.1) |
| The thesaurus screen display is organized alphabetically and includes both descriptors and entry terms. |
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Pilot Thesaurus (8.9.2) |
| This is a pilot thesaurus. It awaits testing by a select user group made up of phoneticians and speech &hearing scientists. The pilot version was completed on April 28, 2002. It will be revised in the next few months. |
Please send all suggestions and comments to the lexicographer, April Rice, at arice@dakotacom.net Feedback is greatly appreciated.
