# Prak: An automatic phonetic alignment tool for Czech

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.08431 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08431/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 24 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Apr 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Robust Speech Recognition via Large-Scale Weak Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04356/) (2022)
- [wav2vec 2.0: A Framework for Self-Supervised Learning of Speech Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11477/) (2020)
- [Common Voice: A Massively-Multilingual Speech Corpus](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.06670/) (2019)
- [A Survey of Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.04554/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Labeling speech down to the identity and time boundaries of phones is a labor-intensive part of phonetic research. To simplify this work, we created a free open-source tool generating phone sequences from Czech text and time-aligning them with audio. Low architecture complexity makes the design approachable for students of phonetics. Acoustic model ReLU NN with 56k weights was trained using PyTorch on small CommonVoice data. Alignment and variant selection decoder is implemented in Python with matrix library. A Czech pronunciation generator is composed of simple rule-based blocks capturing the logic of the language where possible, allowing modification of transcription approach details. Compared to tools used until now, data preparation efficiency improved, the tool is usable on Mac, Linux and Windows in Praat GUI or command line, achieves mostly correct pronunciation variant choice including glottal stop detection, algorithmically captures most of Czech assimilation logic and is both didactic and practical.