Cross-Linguistic Transcription Systems

This repository provides the data underlying the "cross-linguistic transcription systems" project (CLTS [siː ɛl tʰiː ɛs]), which offers transcription systems and transcription data for various sources. Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for more information on how to contribute.

Master data

This repository contains files that are generated by running commands from the pyclts package, intended to help with curation. Thus, it is important to know where master (or authoritative) copies of certain data types live (i.e. where to edit data).

• References: data/references.bib
• Feature system: pkg/transcriptionsystems/features.json
• BIPA transcription system: pkg/transcriptionsystems/bipa/
• Index of source datasets: sources/index.tsv
• Source datasets: sources/*/graphemes.tsv

CLDF Dataset

CLDF Metadata: cldf-metadata.json

Sources: data/references.bib

The Cross-Linguistic Transcription Systems (CLTS) project provides a catalog of speech sounds aggregated from (and linked to) phonetic notation systems from various sources.

property | value --- | --- dc:conformsTo | CLDF Generic dc:identifier | https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3515744

<a name="table-sourcesindextsv"></a>Table sources/index.tsv

CLTS is compiled from information about transcriptions and how these relate to sounds from many sources, such as phoneme inventory databases like PHOIBLE or relevant typological surveys.

property | value --- | --- dc:extent | 33

Columns

Name/Property | Datatype | Description --- | --- | --- NAME | string | Primary key DESCRIPTION | string | REFS | list of string (separated by , ) | References data/references.bib::BibTeX-key TYPE | string<br>Valid choices:<br> td ts sc | CLTS groups transcription information into three categories: Transcription systems (ts), transcription data (td) and soundclass systems (sc). URITEMPLATE | string | Several CLTS sources provide an online catalog of the graphemes they describe. If this is the case, the URI template specified in this column was used to derive the URL column in graphemes.csv.

<a name="table-datafeaturestsv"></a>Table data/features.tsv

The feature system employed by CLTS describes sounds by assigning values for certain features (constrained by sound type). The permissible values per (feature, sound type) are listed in this table.

property | value --- | --- dc:extent | 163

Columns

Name/Property | Datatype | Description --- | --- | --- ID | string | Primary key TYPE | string<br>Valid choices:<br> consonant vowel tone | CLTS distinguishes the basic sound types consonant, vowel, tone, and marker. Features are defined for consonants, vowels, and tones. FEATURE | string | Note that CLTS features are not necessarily binary. VALUE | string |

<a name="table-datagraphemestsv"></a>Table data/graphemes.tsv

property | value --- | --- dc:extent | 81895

Columns

Name/Property | Datatype | Description --- | --- | --- PK | integer | Primary key GRAPHEME | string | Grapheme used in a particular transcription to denote a sound NAME | string | The ordered concatenation of feature values of the denoted sound<br>References data/sounds.tsv::NAME BIPA | string | The grapheme for the denoted sound in the Broad IPA transcription system DATASET | string | Links to the source of this grapheme<br>References sources/index.tsv::NAME FREQUENCY | integer | URL | anyURI | URL of the grapheme in its source online database IMAGE | string | Image of the typeset grapheme. SOUND | string | Audio recording of the sound being pronounced. EXPLICIT | string | Indicates whether the mapping of grapheme to sound was done manually (explicitly, +) or whether it was inferred from the Grapheme. FEATURES | string | Features of the sound as described in the local feature system of the source dataset NOTE | string |

<a name="table-datasoundstsv"></a>Table data/sounds.tsv

property | value --- | --- dc:extent | 8765

Columns

Name/Property | Datatype | Description --- | --- | --- ID | string | NAME | string | Ordered list of features + sound type<br>Primary key FEATURES | list of string (separated by ) | Ordered list of feature values for the sound.<br>References data/features.tsv::ID GRAPHEME | string | CLTS choses the BIPA grapheme as canonical representative of the graphemes mapped to a sound. UNICODE | list of string (separated by /) | Unicode character names of the codepoints in GRAPHEME GENERATED | boolean | Indicates whether the sound was inferred by our algorithmic procedure (which is active for all diphthongs, all cluster sounds, but also all sounds which we do not label explicitly) or whether no inference was needed, since the sound is explicitly defined. TYPE | string<br>Valid choices:<br> consonant vowel diphthong tone cluster | CLTS defines five sound types: consonant, vowel, tone, diphthong, and cluster. The latter two are always GENERATED. NOTE | string |