A Tutorial on Acoustic Phonetic Feature Extraction for Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text-To-Speech (TTS) Applications in African Languages
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Rule-Based Standard Arabic Phonetization at Phoneme, Allophone, and Syllable Level
Fadi Sindran, Firas Mualla, Tino Haderlein, Khaled Daqrouq & Elmar Nöth Rule-Based Standard Arabic Phonetization at Phoneme, Allophone, and Syllable Level Fadi Sindran [email protected] Faculty of Engineering Department of Computer Science /Pattern Recognition Lab Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg Erlangen, 91058, Germany Firas Mualla [email protected] Faculty of Engineering Department of Computer Science /Pattern Recognition Lab Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg Erlangen, 91058, Germany Tino Haderlein [email protected] Faculty of Engineering Department of Computer Science/Pattern Recognition Lab Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg Erlangen, 91058, Germany Khaled Daqrouq [email protected] Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, 22254, Saudi Arabia Elmar Nöth [email protected] Faculty of Engineering Department of Computer Science /Pattern Recognition Lab Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg Erlangen, 91058, Germany Abstract Phonetization is the transcription from written text into sounds. It is used in many natural language processing tasks, such as speech processing, speech synthesis, and computer-aided pronunciation assessment. A common phonetization approach is the use of letter-to-sound rules developed by linguists for the transcription from grapheme to sound. In this paper, we address the problem of rule-based phonetization of standard Arabic. 1The paper contributions can be summarized as follows: 1) Discussion of the transcription rules of standard Arabic which were used in literature on the phonemic and phonetic level. 2) Improvements of existing rules are suggested and new rules are introduced. Moreover, a comprehensive algorithm covering the phenomenon of pharyngealization in standard Arabic is proposed. -
Lecture # 07 (Phonetics)
Phonetics Phonetics (Introduction), Syllables, - text-to-speech recognition, - Onset, nucleus - Phones, - Coda, Rime, Speech sounds and Phonetic - Consonants and vowels, transcription, Phonological Categories and - International Phonetic Alphabet Pronunciation variation, (IPA), - ARPAbet, - Phonetic features, Articulatory Phonetics, - Predicting Phonetic variation, - The Vocal organs, - Factors Influencing Phonetic - Consonants: Place of Articulation, variation, - Consonants: Manner of Articulation, - Vowels, - Syllables, @Copyrights: Natural Language Processing (NLP) Organized by Dr. Ahmad Jalal (http://portals.au.edu.pk/imc/) 1. Phonetics (Introduction) “ What is the proper pronunciation of word “Special”” Text-to-speech conversation (converting strings of text words into acoustic waveforms). “Phonics” methods of teaching to children; - is first glance like a purely modern educational debate. Phonetics is the study of linguistic sounds, - how they are produced by the articulators of the human vocal tract, - how they are realized acoustically, - and how this acoustic realization can be digitized and processed. A key element of both speech recognition and text-to-speech systems: - how words are pronounced in terms of individual speech units called phones. @Copyrights: Natural Language Processing (NLP) Organized by Dr. Ahmad Jalal (http://portals.au.edu.pk/imc/) 2. Speech Sounds and Phonetic Transcription The study of the pronunciation of words is part of the field of phonetics, We model the pronunciation of a word as a string of symbols which represent phones or segments. - A phone is a speech sound; - phones are represented with phonetic symbols that bear some resemblance to a letter. We use 2 different alphabets for describing phones as; (1) The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) - is an evolving standard originally developed by the International Phonetic Association in 1888 with the goal of transcribing the sounds of all human languages. -
UC Berkeley Dissertations, Department of Linguistics
UC Berkeley Dissertations, Department of Linguistics Title Relationship between Perceptual Accuracy and Information Measures: A cross-linguistic Study Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7tx5t8bt Author Kang, Shinae Publication Date 2015 eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Relationship between perceptual accuracy and information measures: A cross-linguistic study by Shinae Kang A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Keith A. Johnson, Chair Professor Sharon Inkelas Professor Susan S. Lin Professor Robert T. Knight Fall 2015 Relationship between perceptual accuracy and information measures: A cross-linguistic study Copyright 2015 by Shinae Kang 1 Abstract Relationship between perceptual accuracy and information measures: A cross-linguistic study by Shinae Kang Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Berkeley Professor Keith A. Johnson, Chair The current dissertation studies how the information conveyed by different speech el- ements of English, Japanese and Korean correlates with perceptual accuracy. Two well- established information measures are used: weighted negative contextual predictability (in- formativity) of a speech element; and the contribution of a speech element to syllable differ- entiation, or functional load. This dissertation finds that the correlation between information and perceptual accuracy differs depending on both the type of information measure and the language of the listener. To compute the information measures, Chapter 2 introduces a new corpus consisting of all the possible syllables for each of the three languages. The chapter shows that the two information measures are inversely correlated. -
Multilingual Speech Recognition for Selected West-European Languages
master’s thesis Multilingual Speech Recognition for Selected West-European Languages Bc. Gloria María Montoya Gómez May 25, 2018 advisor: Doc. Ing. Petr Pollák, CSc. Czech Technical University in Prague Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Department of Circuit Theory Acknowledgement I would like to thank my advisor, Doc. Ing. Petr Pollák, CSc. I was very privileged to have him as my mentor. Pollák was always friendly and patient to give me his knowl- edgeable advise and encouragement during my study at Czech Technical University in Prague. His high standards on quality taught me how to do good scientific work, write, and present ideas. Declaration I declare that I worked out the presented thesis independently and I quoted all used sources of information in accord with Methodical instructions about ethical principles for writing academic thesis. iii Abstract Hlavním cílem předložené práce bylo vytvoření první verze multilingválního rozpozná- vače řeči pro vybrané 4 západoevropské jazyky. Klíčovým úkolem této práce bylo de- finovat vztahy mezi subslovními akustickými elementy napříč jednotlivými jazyky při tvorbě automatického rozpoznávače řeči pro více jazyků. Vytvořený multilingvální sys- tém pokrývá aktuálně následující jazyky: angličtinu, němčinu, portugalštinu a španěl- štinu. Jelikož dostupná fonetická reprezentace hlásek pro jednotlivé jazyky byla různá podle použitých zdrojových dat, prvním krokem této práce bylo její sjednocení a vy- tvoření sdílené fonetické reprezentace na bázi abecedy X-SAMPA. Pokud jsou dále acoustické subslovní elementy reprezentovány sdílenými skrytými Markovovy modely, případný nedostatek zdrojových dat pro trénováni může být pokryt z jiných jazyků. Dalším krokem byla vlastní realizace multilingválního systému pomocí nástrojové sady KALDI. Použité jazykové modely byly na bázi zredukovaných trigramových modelů zís- kaných z veřejně dostupých zdrojů. -
Phonemic Similarity Metrics to Compare Pronunciation Methods
Phonemic Similarity Metrics to Compare Pronunciation Methods Ben Hixon1, Eric Schneider1, Susan L. Epstein1,2 1 Department of Computer Science, Hunter College of The City University of New York 2 Department of Computer Science, The Graduate Center of The City University of New York [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] error rate. The minimum number of insertions, deletions and Abstract substitutions required for transformation of one sequence into As graphemetophoneme methods proliferate, their careful another is the Levenshtein distance [3]. Phoneme error rate evaluation becomes increasingly important. This paper ex (PER) is the Levenshtein distance between a predicted pro plores a variety of metrics to compare the automatic pronunci nunciation and the reference pronunciation, divided by the ation methods of three freelyavailable graphemetophoneme number of phonemes in the reference pronunciation. Word er packages on a large dictionary. Two metrics, presented here ror rate (WER) is the proportion of predicted pronunciations for the first time, rely upon a novel weighted phonemic substi with at least one phoneme error to the total number of pronun tution matrix constructed from substitution frequencies in a ciations. Neither WER nor PER, however, is a sufficiently collection of trusted alternate pronunciations. These new met sensitive measurement of the distance between pronunciations. rics are sensitive to the degree of mutability among phonemes. Consider, for example, two pronunciation pairs that use the An alignment tool uses this matrix to compare phoneme sub ARPAbet phoneme set [4]: stitutions between pairs of pronunciations. S OW D AH S OW D AH Index Terms: graphemetophoneme, edit distance, substitu S OW D AA T AY B L tion matrix, phonetic distance measures On the left are two reasonable pronunciations for the English word “soda,” while the pair on the right compares a pronuncia 1. -
Vowels and Consonants
VOWELS VOWELS AND CONSONANTS THIRD EDITION Praise for the previous edition: “This is a fascinating, accessible, and reader-friendly book by a master phonetician, about AND how speech sounds are made, and how they can be analyzed. I warmly recommend the book to everyone with an interest, professional or otherwise, in spoken language.” John Laver, Queen Margaret University College Praise for the third edition: CONSONANTS “This book conveys an amazing range of current science, including phonetics, CONSONANTS psycholinguistics, and speech technology, while being engaging and accessible for novices. This edition maintains Ladefoged’s friendly, enthusiastic style while adding important updates.” Natasha Warner, University of Arizona This popular introduction to phonetics describes how languages use a variety of different sounds, many of them quite unlike any that occur in well-known languages. Peter Ladefoged rightly earned his reputation as one of the world’s leading linguists, and students benefitted from his accessible writing and skill in communicating ideas. The third edition of his engaging introduction to phonetics has now been fully updated to reflect the latest trends in the field. It retains Peter Ladefoged’s expert writing and knowledge, and combines them with Sandra Ferrari Disner’s essential updates on topics including speech technology. Vowels and Consonants explores a wide range of topics, including the main forces operating on the sounds of languages; the acoustic, articulatory, and perceptual THIRD EDITION components of speech; and the inner workings of the most modern text-to-speech systems and speech recognition systems in use today. The third edition is supported by an accompanying website featuring new data, and even more reproductions of the sounds of a wide variety of languages, to reinforce learning and bring the descriptions to life, at www.wiley.com/go/ladefoged. -
Natasha R. Abner –
Natasha R. Abner Interests Sign languages, morpho-syntax, syntax-semantics interface, language development & emergence. Employment 2017–present University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. Assistant Professor Linguistics Department Sign Language & Multi-Modal Communication Lab Language Across Modalities 2014–2017 Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ. Assistant Professor Linguistics Department 2012–2014 University of Chicago, Chicago, IL. Postdoctoral Scholar Goldin-Meadow Laboratory Department of Psychology Education 2007–2012 PhD in Linguistics. University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA Fall 2010 Visiting student. Département d’études cognitives École normale supérieure Paris, France 2001–2005 BA in Linguistics, Summa Cum Laude. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Theses Dissertation Title There Once Was a Verb: The Predicative Core of Possessive and Nominalization Structures in American Sign Language Committee Hilda Koopman and Edward Stabler (chairs), Karen Emmorey, and Edward Keenan Master’s Thesis Title Right Where You Belong: Right Peripheral WH-Elements and the WH-Question Paradigm in American Sign Language Linguistics Department – 440 Lorch Hall – Ann Arbor, MI Ó (734)764-0353 • Q [email protected] Last Updated: April 27, 2019 1/11 Committee Edward Stabler and Anoop Mahajan (chairs), and Pamela Munro Honor’s Thesis Title Resultatives Gone Minimal Advisors Acrisio Pires and Samuel Epstein Grants & Awards 2019 Honored Instructor University of Michigan 2018 New Initiative New Infrastructure (NINI) Grant ($12,500) University of Michigan 2016 Summer Grant Proposal Development Award Montclair State University 2011–2012 Dissertation Year Fellowship UCLA 2010–2011 Charles E. and Sue K. Young Award UCLA + Awarded annually to one student from the UCLA Humanities Division for exemplary achievement in scholarship, teaching, and University citizenship. -
Phonetic Properties of Oral Stops in Three Languages with No Voicing Distinction
City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2018 Phonetic Properties of Oral Stops in Three Languages with No Voicing Distinction Stephanie M. Kakadelis The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2871 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] PHONETIC PROPERTIES OF ORAL STOPS IN THREE LANGUAGES WITH NO VOICING DISTINCTION by STEPHANIE MARIE KAKADELIS A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2018 © 2018 STEPHANIE MARIE KAKADELIS All Rights Reserved ii Phonetic Properties of Oral Stops in Three Languages with No Voicing Distinction by Stephanie Marie Kakadelis This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Linguistics in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date Juliette Blevins Chair of Examining Committee Date Gita Martohardjono Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Douglas H. Whalen Jason Bishop Claire Bowern (Yale University) THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT Phonetic Properties of Oral Stops in Three Languages with No Voicing Distinction by Stephanie Marie Kakadelis Advisor: Juliette Blevins Almost all studies on the phonetics of oral stop voicing patterns focus on languages with a voicing distinction. This gives rise to some debate regarding which aspects of voicing patterns arise from inherent articulatory effects related to the production of a voicing distinction, and which aspects are intentional adjustments by speakers meant to enhance a phonological contrast. -
Techniques and Challenges in Speech Synthesis Final Report for ELEC4840B
Techniques and Challenges in Speech Synthesis Final Report for ELEC4840B David Ferris - 3109837 04/11/2016 A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering at The University of Newcastle, Australia. Abstract The aim of this project was to develop and implement an English language Text-to-Speech synthesis system. This first involved an extensive study of the mechanisms of human speech production, a review of modern techniques in speech synthesis, and analysis of tests used to evaluate the effectiveness of synthesized speech. It was determined that a diphone synthesis system was the most effective choice for the scope of this project. A diphone synthesis system operates by concatenating sections of recorded human speech, with each section containing exactly one phonetic transition. By using a database that contains recordings of all possible phonetic transitions within a language, or diphones, a diphone synthesis system can produce any word by concatenating the correct diphone sequence. A method of automatically identifying and extracting diphones from prompted speech was designed, allowing for the creation of a diphone database by a speaker in less than 40 minutes. The Carnegie Mellon University Pronouncing Dictionary, or CMUdict, was used to determine the pronunciation of known words. A system for smoothing the transitions between diphone recordings was designed and implemented. CMUdict was then used to train a maximum-likelihood prediction system to determine the correct pronunciation of unknown English language alphabetic words. Using this, the system was able to find an identical or reasonably similar pronunciation for over 76% of the training set. -
Automatic Phonetization-Based Statistical Linguistic Study of Standard Arabic
Fadi Sindran, Firas Mualla, Tino Haderlein, Khaled Daqrouq & Elmar Nöth Automatic Phonetization-based Statistical Linguistic Study of Standard Arabic Fadi Sindran [email protected] Faculty of Engineering/ Department of Computer Science Pattern Recognition Lab Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg Erlangen, 91058, Germany Firas Mualla [email protected] Faculty of Engineering/ Department of Computer Science Pattern Recognition Lab Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg Erlangen, 91058, Germany Tino Haderlein [email protected] Faculty of Engineering/ Department of Computer Science Pattern Recognition Lab Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg Erlangen, 91058, Germany Khaled Daqrouq [email protected] Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, 22254, Saudi Arabia Elmar Nöth [email protected] Faculty of Engineering/ Department of Computer Science Pattern Recognition Lab Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg Erlangen, 91058, Germany Abstract Statistical studies based on automatic phonetic transcription of Standard Arabic texts are rare, and even though studies have been performed, they have been done only on one level – phoneme or syllable – and the results cannot be generalized on the language as a whole. In this paper we automatically derived accurate statistical information about phonemes, allophones, syllables, and allosyllables in Standard Arabic. A corpus of more than 5 million words, including words and sentences -
The Control of Speech
Speculations on the control of speech Peter Ladefoged Speech, like most skilled movements, is best described as a goal directed activity. The speech centers in the brain send out instructions for the speech apparatus to achieve certain goals. But it is not at all clear how these goals are defined. One possibility has been outlined by proponents of Articulatory Phonology (Browman & Goldstein, 1986, 1992, Saltzman & Kelso 1987, int. al.), They suggest that the goals are a series of articulatory gestures, being careful to point out that we must distinguish between the higher level gestural goals and the lower level system that implements them. When you produce a word (e.g. cat) their notion is that the speech centers in the brain do not issue instructions for the use of particular muscles. Instead they issue instructions equivalent to “Make the following complex gestures: voiceless aspirated velar stop, follow this by a low front vowel, finally make a voiceless glottaled alveolar stop”. The different parts of each of these instructions specify goals for different parts of the speech mechanism. “Voiceless aspirated” is an instruction for a certain laryngeal gesture, “velar stop” a lingual gesture, and so on. We can never be sure what the goals of the speech centers in the brain are. We cannot find out by asking speakers what they are trying to control. If you ask an unsophisticated speaker of English what they are controlling when they say cat they will probably say that they don’t know, or that they are trying to produce a ‘c’ followed by an ‘a’ and then by a ‘t’. -
Obituary for Peter Ladefoged (1925-2006)
Obituary for Peter Ladefoged (1925-2006) Peter Ladefoged died suddenly on January 24, 2006, at the age of 80 in London, on his way home from field work in India. He was born on September 17, 1925, in Sutton, Surrey, England. In 1951 he received his MA at the University of Edinburgh and in 1959 his PhD from the same University. At Edinburgh he studied phonetics with David Abercrombie, a pupil of Daniel Jones and so also connected to Henry Sweet. Peter’s dissertation, The Nature of Vowel Quality, focused on the cardinal vowels and their articulatory vs. auditory basis. In 1953, he married Jenny MacDonald. In 1959-62 he carried out field researches in Africa that resulted in A Phonetic Study of West African Languages. In 1962 he moved to America permanently and joined the UCLA English Department where he founded the UCLA Phonetics Laboratory. Not long after he arrived at UCLA, he was asked to work as the phonetics consultant for the movie My Fair Lady (1964). Three main cornerstones characterize Peter’s career: the fieldwork on little-studied sounds, instrumental laboratory phonetics and linguistic phonetic theory. He was particularly concerned about documenting the phonetic properties of endangered languages. His field research work covered a world-wide area, including the Aleutians, Australia, Botswana, Brazil, China, Ghana, India, Korea, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Scotland, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda and Yemen. Among many distinctive contributions to phonetics was his insistence on the huge diversity of phonetic phenomena in the languages of the world. Ladefoged’s fieldwork originated or refined many data collections and analytic techniques.