Forced Aligner Workshop

Dr Simón González Ochoa and Dr James Grama from the Sydney Speaks Project, ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language and The Australian National University, visited Macquarie University on 11 and 12 September 2018 to present a seminar and interactive workshop on forced aligners.

The seminar 'Expanding the study of linguistic variation through forced-alignment’, considered some of the major forced-aligners being used in linguistics today including their primary uses, strengths and weaknesses. A guided hands-on workshop introduced the Montreal Forced Aligner (MFA) and workshop participants had the opportunity to work on their own data. The workshop, hosted by Associate Professor Felicity Cox, was co-sponsored by the Centre for Language Sciences and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders. Participants included members of Macquarie University's Phonetics Lab and Child Language Lab.