Automatic alignment and phonetic studies: Comparing alignment systems for the analysis of the schwa

Three automatic alignment systems are compared in their adequacy to account for the vowel schwa as compared to a manual transcription obtained from two judges. Error rates and types are analysed, as well as the linguistic factors involved. The type of surrounding consonants and the duration of schwa influence the decisions of the three systems. Moreover, the systems behave differently, depending on some of their architectural characteristics and on the task (detection vs. boundary determination). These results underline the necessity to have a fair understanding of the characteristics and bias of the alignment system to be used in a phonetic analysis. MOTS-CLÉS : alignement automatique, schwa, corpus, analyse phonétique.