On Generating Combilex Pronunciations via Morphological Analysis

Combilex is a high-quality lexicon that has been developed specifically for speech technology purposes and recently released by CSTR. Combilex benefits from many advanced features. This paper explores one of these: the ability to generate fully-specified transcriptions for morphologically derived words automatically. This functionality was originally implemented to encode the pronunciations of derived words in terms of their constituent morphemes, thus accelerating lexicon development and ensuring a high level of consistency. In this paper, we propose this method of modelling pronunciations can be exploited further by combining it with a morphological parser, thus yielding a method to generate full transcriptions for unknown derived words. Not only could this accelerate adding new derived words to Combilex, but it could also serve as an alternative to conventional letter-to-sound rules. This paper presents preliminary work indicating this is a promising direction

Ordering the suggestions of a spellchecker without using context.

Having located a misspelling, a spellchecker generally offers some suggestions for the intended word. Even without using context, a spellchecker can draw on various types of information in ordering its suggestions. A series of experiments is described, beginning with a basic corrector that implements a well-known algorithm for reversing single simple errors, and making successive enhancements to take account of substring matches, pronunciation, known error patterns, syllable structure and word frequency. The improvement in the ordering produced by each enhancement is measured on a large corpus of misspellings. The final version is tested on other corpora against a widely used commercial spellchecker and a research prototype

Word processing in languages using non-alphabetic scripts: The cases of Japanese and Chinese

This thesis investigates the processing of words written in Japanese kanji and Chinese hànzì, i.e. logographic scripts. Special attention is given to the fact that the majority of Japanese kanji have multiple pronunciations (generally depending on the combination a kanji forms with other characters). First, using masked priming, it is established that upon presentation of a Japanese kanji multiple pronunciations are activated. In subsequent experiments using word naming with context pictures it is concluded that both Chinese hànzì and Japanese kanji are read out loud via a direct route from orthography to phonology. However, only Japanese kanji become susceptible to semantic or phonological context effects as a result of a cost due to the processing of multiple pronunciations. Finally, zooming in on the size of the articulatory planning unit in Japanese it is concluded that the mora as a phonological unit best complies with the observed data pattern and not the phoneme or the syllabl

Measuring the Adult Literacy Rate in English: The Case of the Grand Rapids West Hope Zone

Research efforts in identifying adult literacy rates have for the most part focused on national and international contexts. Conversely, there has been little to no research conducted on neighborhood literacy rates in medium size cities. The purpose of this study was to identify the adult literacy rate in the West Hope Zone, a neighborhood in Grand Rapids Michigan. The major findings reveal that the English illiteracy rates are higher than the most recent estimations by the National Adult Literacy Survey. Adults who attended college, regardless of the language, had more literacy skills and knowledge than those who had a high school diploma or did not graduate from high school. Native speakers of English developed more English literacy skills and knowledge than non-native speakers of English. Based on these findings the author recommended that literacy development efforts be focused on concurrent bilingual programs. Similarly, the author suggested that systematic studies are needed to identify literacy rate and implement literacy programs in neighborhoods within medium and large cities

The Challenge of Chinese Character Acquisition: Leveraging Multimodality in Overcoming a Centuries-Old Problem

For learners unfamiliar with character-based or logosyllabic writing systems, the process of developing literacy in written Chinese poses significantly more obstacles than learning to read and write in a second language like Portuguese or Cherokee. In this article we describe the linguistic nature of Chinese characters; we outline traditional and new media approaches to Chinese character acquisition; we unpack how multimodal technologies combined with computational linguistics might be used to provide new types of support for Chinese character learning; and we offer a design that incorporates several of these concepts into a digital writing support tool that could work as a scaffold to enable Chinese language students to leverage their Chinese listening and speaking skills as well as their visual literacies in support of producing and learning Chinese characters

The Challenge of Chinese Character Acquisition: Leveraging Multimodality in Overcoming a Centuries-Old Problem

For learners unfamiliar with character-based or logosyllabic writing systems, the process of developing literacy in written Chinese poses significantly more obstacles than learning to read and write in a second language like Portuguese or Cherokee. In this article we describe the linguistic nature of Chinese characters; we outline traditional and new media approaches to Chinese character acquisition; we unpack how multimodal technologies combined with computational linguistics might be used to provide new types of support for Chinese character learning; and we offer a design that incorporates several of these concepts into a digital writing support tool that could work as a scaffold to enable Chinese language students to leverage their Chinese listening and speaking skills as well as their visual literacies in support of producing and learning Chinese characters

The production and comprehension of tone in Innu

Plusieurs auteurs ont attesté l'emploi de pitch contrastif en innu, une langue qui fait partie de la branche centrale des langues algonquiennes. Il n'y a pourtant que trois études acoustiques de ce phénomène prosodique (Rochette et Guay 1975, Martin 1980 et Malo 1981), qui portent toutes uniquement sur des formes flexionnelles verbales du dialecte de Mingan et qui ont produit des résultats contradictoires. Jusqu'à maintenant, on a porté très peu d'attention aux autres emplois des tons dans cette langue. Seuls les travaux de Drapeau (1979 et 2006) et Drapeau et Mailhot (1989) rendent compte de ce phénomène et de son origine dans le dialecte de l'Ouest, mais les analyses acoustiques restent à venir. Dans le but de fournir des données phonétiques synchroniques, qui permettraient de confirmer l'existence et l'emploi des tons dans le dialecte de l'Ouest, et pour connaître les éléments phonétiques qui jouent dans la production de ce phénomène, nous avons choisi d'effectuer un test de production et un test de compréhension auprès de plusieurs locuteurs natifs de deux communautés innues (Betsiamites et Sept-Iles). Nos résultats démontrent l'existence d'un ton bas sur la syllabe finale des mots qui ont subi le processus d'apocope ou celui de dégemination des consonnes en finale de mot. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Phonétique, Ton, Pitch, Innu