Digital studies of spoken speech: history, methodology, modern tools
Oxana V. Goncharova · Philology Theory & Practice · 2025
The aim of the research is to establish the interrelationships between the historical stages of development of speech data processing technologies and the formation of the modern methodological base of instrumental phonetics. The paper presents the evolution of the formation of instrumental approaches to the study of spoken speech – from the first mechanical devices of the 18th century to modern neural network architectures, and analyzes modern software and hardware solutions – from universal platforms for acoustic analysis to specialized systems for automatic alignment of speech data. The study includes a systematization of the methodological principles of each historical period, identifying their conceptual limitations and potential for solving current linguistic problems. The scientific novelty lies in the periodization of the development of instrumental phonetics, based on the interaction of technological capabilities and methodological concepts of each stage. As a result, three types of conceptual gaps (technological, semantic, cognitive) were identified, hindering the effective integration of modern digital technologies with traditional linguistic categories. The necessity of creating hybrid analytical platforms capable of overcoming the fragmentation between quantitative parameters of automatic processing and qualitative characteristics of phonological description is substantiated.