praat-textgrids 1.0.2

Manipulation of Praat text-format TextGrids

praat-textgrids -- Praat TextGrid manipulation in Python

Description

textgrids is a module for handling Praat short or long text-file TextGrid files. It implements five classes. From largest to smallest:

• TextGrid -- a dict with tier names as keys and Tiers as values
• Tier -- a list of either Interval or Point objects
• Interval -- an object representing Praat intervals
• Point -- a namedtuple representing Praat points
• Transcript -- a str with special methods for transcription handling

All Praat text objects are represented as Transcript objects.

Copyright

Copyright © 2019 Legisign.org, Tommi Nieminen [e-mail]

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Module contents

1. TextGrid

TextGrid is a dict whose keys are tier names (strings) and values are Tier objects. The constructor takes an optional filename argument for easy loading and parsing textgrid files.

1.1. Properties

All the properties of dicts plus:

• filename holds the textgrid filename, if any. read() and write() methods both set or update it.

1.2. Methods

All the methods of dicts plus:

• parse() -- parse string data into a TextGrid
• read() -- read a TextGrid file name
• write() -- write a TextGrid file name
• tier_from_csv() -- read a textgrid tier from a CSV file
• tier_to_csv() -- write a textgrid tier into a CSV file

parse(), read() and write() each take a filename argument.

tier_from_csv() and tier_to_csv() both take two obligatory arguments, the tier name and the filename, in that order. A Boolean point_tier=True can be given to tier_from_csv() to read point tiers.

2. Tier

Tier is a list of either Interval or Point objects.

NOTE: Tier only allows adding Interval or Point objects. Adding anything else or mixing Intervals and Points will trigger an exception.

2.2. Properties

All the properties of lists plus:

• is_point_tier -- Boolean value: True for point tier, False for interval tier.

2.3. Methods

All the methods of lists plus:

• concat() -- concatenate intervals
• to_csv() -- convert tier data into a CSV-like list

concat() returns a TypeError if used with a point tier. It takes two optional arguments, first= and last=, both of which are integer indexes with the usual Python semantics: 0 stands for the first element, -1 for the last element, these being also the defaults.

to_csv() returns a CSV-like list. It’s mainly intended to be used from the TextGrid level method tier_to_csv() but can be called directly if writing to a file is not desired.

3. Interval

Interval is an object class.

3.1. Properties

• dur -- interval duration (float)
• mid -- interval midpoint (float)
• text -- text label (Transcript)
• xmax -- interval end time (float)
• xmin -- interval start time (float)

3.3. Methods

• containsvowel() -- Boolean: does the interval contain a vowel?
• startswithvowel() -- Boolean: does the interval start with a vowel?
• timegrid() -- create a grid of even time slices

containsvowel() and startswithvowel() check for possible vowels in both Praat notation and Unicode but can of course make an error if symbols are used in an unexpected way. They don’t take arguments.

timegrid() returns a list of timepoints (in float) evenly distributed from xmin to xmax. It takes an optional integer argument specifying the number of timepoints desired; the default is 3. It raises a ValueError if the argument is not an integer or is less than 1.

4. Point

Point is a namedtuple with two properties: text and xpos.

4.1. Properties

• text -- text label (Transcript)
• xpos -- temporal position (float)

5. Transcript

Transcript is a str-derived class with one special method: transcode().

5.1. Properties

All the properties of strs.

5.2. Methods

All the methods of strs plus:

• transcode() -- convert Praat notation to Unicode or vice versa.

Without arguments, transcode() assumes its input to be in Praat notation and converts it to Unicode; no check is made as to whether the input really is in Praat notation but nothing will happen if it isn’t.

Optional to_unicode=False argument inverts the direction of the transcoding from Unicode to Praat. Again, it is not checked whether input is in Unicode.

With optional retain_diacritics=True argument (only applicable with to_unicode=True which is the default direction) the transcoding does not remove over- and understrike diacritics from the transcript.

Example code

import sys
import textgrids

for arg in sys.argv[1:]:
    # Try to open the file as textgrid
    try:
        grid = textgrids.TextGrid(arg)
    # Discard and try the next one
    except:
        continue

    # Assume "syllables" is the name of the tier
    # containing syllable information
    for syll in grid['syllables']:
        # Convert Praat to Unicode in the label
        label = syll.text.transcode()
        # Print label and syllable duration, CSV-like
        print('"{}";{}'.format(label, syll.dur))