Downloading and installing

PCT is currently available for Mac, PC, and Linux machines. It can be downloaded from PCT releases page using the following steps. Note that there are several dependencies that are pre-requisites before PCT can function properly. For Mac and Windows machines, we have created executable files that bundle most of the dependencies and the PCT software itself into a single package. Using these is the easiest / fastest way to get PCT up and running on your machine. Note: PCT v 1.4.1 is confirmed to work on Mac OS 10.13 and higher, but may have issues on earlier OS platforms.

Download

1. Go to the PCT releases page.
2. Click on the link for your operating system with the highest number (= most recent version).

Windows Executable

# NOTE 1: This method requires that you are running a 64-bit version of windows. You can check this by in Control Panel -> System and Security -> System.

# NOTE 2: When the software is downloaded, you may get a security warning indicating that you have tried to launch an unrecognized app. Selecting “Run anyway” should allow PCT to work as expected.

# Download the latest version’s executable (should be a file ending in .exe) from the Phonological CorpusTools page on GitHub (https://github.com/PhonologicalCorpusTools/CorpusTools/releases). Double-click this file to run PCT to your computer. It can then be run the same as any other program.

Mac Executable – PCT v 1.4.1 is confirmed to work on 10.13 and higher, but may have issues on earlier OS platforms

# NOTE 1: When the software is downloaded, you may get a security warning indicating that you have tried to launch an unrecognized app. If you Ctrl-click on the application and select “Open,” you should be able to override the security warning and use PCT normally.

# Download the latest version’s installer (should be a file ending in .dmg) from the Phonological CorpusTools page on GitHub (https://github.com/PhonologicalCorpusTools/CorpusTools/releases). You can then double-click this file to run Phonological CorpusTools. You can move the icon to your toolbar like any other application.

Linux / Fallback instructions

1. Dependencies: You’ll first need to make sure all of the following are installed. The third and fourth ones (NumPy and SciPy) are needed only for the Acoustic Similarity functionality to work.

1. Python 3.3 or higher
2. Regex
3. NumPy
4. SciPy
5. Scikit-learn
6. (NB: If you are on Windows and can’t successfully use the acoustic similarity module after installing NumPy and SciPy from the above sources, you may want to try installing them from precompiled binaries.)

2. Get the source code for PCT. Click on either the .zip or the .gz file on the PCT releases page or the GitHub repository, to download the zipped or tarball version of the code, depending on your preference.
3. After expanding the file, you will find a file called setup.py in the top level directory. Run it in one of the following ways:

1. Double-click it. If this doesn’t work, access the file properties and ensure that you have permission to run the file; if not, give them to yourself. In Windows, this may require that you open the file in Administrator mode (also accessible through file properties). If your computer opens the .py file in a text editor rather than running it, you can access the file properties to set Python 3.x as the default program to use with run .py files. If the file is opened in IDLE (a Python editor), you can use the “Run” button in the IDLE interface to run the script instead.
2. Open a terminal window and run the file. In Linux or Mac OS X, there should be a Terminal application pre-installed. In Windows, you may need to install Cygwin. Once the terminal window is open, nagivate to the top level CorpusTools folder—the one that has setup.py in it. (Use the command ‘cd’ to navigate your filesystem; Google “terminal change directory” for further instructions.) Once in the correct directory, run this command: python3 setup.py install. You may lack proper permissions to run this file, in which case on Linux or Mac OS X you can instead run sudo python3 setup.py install. If Python 3.x is the only version of Python on your system, it may be possible or necessary to use the command python rather than python3.

4. Phonological CorpusTools should now be installed! Run it from a terminal window using the command pct. You can also open a “Run” dialogue and use the command pct there. In Windows, the Run tool is usually found in All Programs -> Accessories.

Local storage

While using PCT, you will work on a corpus file using one of the transcription systems. Once you create or download these files, they are saved in your local hard drive for later use. Be default, your PCT working directory is “C:\Users\[USER NAME]\Documents\PCT\CorpusTools\” (Windows), or “~/Documents/PCT/CorpusTools/” (macOS or Linux). You will find several directories in there:

• “CORPUS” is the place for the corpus files you created or downloaded (cf. Loading in corpora).
• “ERRORS” is where you can find error messages for the environment exhaustivity (cf. Predictability of Distribution).
• “FEATURE” is the folder where all your feature files are saved (cf. Working with transcriptions and feature systems).
• “SEARCH” is where you can find recent phonological searches (recent.searches) and saved searches (saved.searches). See Saving searches for how to save a search.

If you want to keep doing the analysis on a different machine, you can copy the files to the relevant path in the new machine. Or, if you received a file that runs on PCT, you need to save it in the correct directory for PCT to recognize it. Please note that the working directory will not exist if you have never run PCT.

See Preferences for information on how to change the working directory.