Tools rPraat and mPraat Interfacing Phonetic Analyses with Signal Processing

The paper presents the rPraat package for R/mPraat tool-box for Matlab which constitutes an interface between the most popular software for phonetic analyses, Praat, and the two more general programmes. The package adds on to the functionality of Praat, it is shown to be superior in terms of processing speed to other tools, while maintaining the interconnection with the data structure of R and Matlab, which provides a wide range of subsequent processing possibilities. The use of the proposed tool is demonstrated on a comparison of real speech data with synthetic speech generated by means of dynamic unit selection.