Sound playback (with ICE-GB R2 Sound)

ICECUP 3.1 also supports simultaneous synchronised audio playback using sound recordings (available as an optional extra). ICE-GB R2 Sound is the digital audio for the 300 spoken texts in the ICE-GB corpus, subdivided into individual text units or short series of text units, and accurately aligned with the texts. You can download the audio for the ICE-GB sample corpus by following the links below.

Once the audio is installed you can use ICECUP to hear the audio. Playback controls will appear on the button bar.

Simply press play to hear the sound recording for a particular text unit in the corpus.

The following examples are also included in the sample corpus package.

Audio Example 1

Play Listen to the audio (S1A-062: 36)

Sometimes it is not possible to subdivide the audio into a single text unit. In the audio for S1A-012, the first sentence we hear speaker A, with speaker B overlapping.

Audio Example 2

Play Listen to the audio (S1A-012: 1-4)

Of course, ICE-GB does not simply consist of text but grammatically annotated trees. With audio installed you can open a spy window while a text is playing. You can browse trees and hear speakers talk.

Using the continuous play option, when one section has been played back ICECUP will move onto the start of the next one and play this.

Audio Example 3

Play Listen to the audio (S1B-007: 233)

The audio is valuable for many users, not least language learners. You can search the corpus for lexical or grammatical patterns and then listen to examples.

Free download

You can try the audio for yourself by downloading and installing the ICE-GB R2 Sampler and the ICE-GB R2 Sound Sampler add-on.

Order ICE-GB R2 and R2 Sound

Audio playback is a feature of ICECUP 3.1. The ICE-GB R2 Sound Recordings come on 11 CDs and are aligned with ICE-GB Release 2. If you order both the corpus and the audio, you can use ICECUP to hear speakers in the corpus.

You can order ICE-GB Release 2 and ICE-GB R2 Sound by completing and submitting the order forms on our website.

Further reading

The following are sources of further information:

  • A handbook about ICECUP and ICE-GB (Exploring Natural Language, Nelson, Wallis and Aarts, 2002) is available from John Benjamins.
  • Read further pages on this website about Fuzzy Tree Fragments.
  • Download and read the help file.
  • Download and install the sampler packages and experiment with the software and corpus (Windows only: ICE-GB R2 DCPSE).

This page last modified 7 July, 2020 by Survey Web Administrator.