AN X-RAY DATABASE FOR FRENCH

This paper presents a preliminary version of a large X-ray database that is currently being elaborated at both the Institut de Phonétique of Strasbourg and the Institut de la Communication Parlée of Grenoble. It currently contains 4 movies that present over 2000 images. These X-ray data focus on different phonetic issues in French: juncture, nasality, and coarticulation in VCV sequences. The database contains 3 kinds of digitized data; cineradiographic data, acoustic signals and hand-drawn sagittal contours of the vocal tract. All files are phonetically labeled and stored on CDROMs. Management of the database is developed for Windows NT or Windows 95 with "Microsoft ACCESS", and a version for Macintosh is in progress. The data are accessed via a user friendly interface, developed under JAVA, that send requests in SQL language to the database, displays the selected X-ray images and the corresponding hand-drawn vocal tract contours, and also plays the corresponding video QuickTime movies. [This work was supported by the CNRS].