Speech technologies for the audiovisual and multimedia interaction environments

361 p

Review of Research on Speech Technology: Main Contributions From Spanish Research Groups

In the last two decades, there has been an important increase in research on speech technology in Spain, mainly due to a higher level of funding from European, Spanish and local institutions and also due to a growing interest in these technologies for developing new services and applications. This paper provides a review of the main areas of speech technology addressed by research groups in Spain, their main contributions in the recent years and the main focus of interest these days. This description is classified in five main areas: audio processing including speech, speaker characterization, speech and language processing, text to speech conversion and spoken language applications. This paper also introduces the Spanish Network of Speech Technologies (RTTH. Red Temática en Tecnologías del Habla) as the research network that includes almost all the researchers working in this area, presenting some figures, its objectives and its main activities developed in the last years

How children develop their ability to combine words : a network-based approach

A new way to study and represent early syntactic development is introduced that offers a promising avenue to improve on standard cumulative approaches to language learning. The analysis is inspired by complex network theory and explores an important issue in psycholinguistics: how children combine words syntactically. To this end, the article exploits the longitudinal data of multiple individual studies stored and publicly available in the CHILDES database. This analysis proves useful in two regards: in coincidence with previous approaches to syntactic development, it reveals a similar linear-nonlinear pattern of syntactic development (a combination of linear periods interrupted by abrupt transitions) in typical children regardless the language they are acquiring. It also provides a straightforward objective measure of syntactic impairment in atypically developing children. A striking difference between typical and atypical children lies in the connectivity of functional words, which suddenly become hubs but only in typical development. Our technique offers a formal measure of impairment with respect to typical syntactic development, which goes beyond the standard notion of retardation in development, for the Down syndrome condition

Aldaketak Prosodiaren Esparruan : Ikergaiak eta arazo metodologikoak

International audienceThe aim of this communication is to present the state of the research related to Basque prosody. On the one hand, after having defined the boundary of our reference field, the state of current researches will be presented. On the other hand, the focus will be put on some methodological issues that have been raised by experience grounded researches. This last question is directly related to change and evolution. These research works will be a part of an integrative project incorporating the whole Basque Country. The following aspects will be considered : prosody's fields, prosody's linguistic aspects (stress and intonation), paralinguistic aspects (attitudes), non-linguistic aspects (age, sex, physical state, emotions) and the characteristics of the fields of investigation that must be taken into consideration with today's Basque people (geographical, social, stylistic).Komunikazio honen helburua euskararen prosodiaren azterketen egoera aurkeztea da. Alde batetik, ikerketa esparru honen arloen mugapena egin ondoren euskararen azterketen egoera zertan den ikusiko da. Bestetik egin diren ikerketa batzuetako esperientzian oinarrituta aurkitu diren arazo metodologikoez jardungo dugu. Azken honetan aldaketa eta aldaeren arazoa bete-betean kokatzen da. Horrekin batera lan eremu hauek lantzeko Euskal Herri osoan abian daukagun proiektu baten berri emango dugu. Aztertuko diren arloetarik batzuk honako hauek izango dira : Prosodiaren arloak, prosodiaren arlo linguistikoa (azentua eta intonazioa), arlo paralinguistikoa (jarrerak), arlo ez linguistikoa (adina, sexua, egoera fisikoa, emozioak), egungo euskaldunekin gogotan erabili behar diren ezaugarriak azterketa eremuan (geografikoak, sozialak, estilistikoak)

The influence of diatopic variation and first language on the perception of emotions in the Basque language

El objetivo de este trabajo es determinar si la variación diatópica y la lengua materna influyen en la percepción de emociones en la lengua vasca. Para ello se grabó un corpus oral en el que se recogieron las tres emociones básicas simuladas por mujeres jóvenes procedentes del País Vasco. El corpus constaba de 24 grabaciones orales que producían la misma frase semánticamente neutra, con este corpus se diseñó un test específico para la investigación, en el que los 349 participantes jóvenes de los siete territorios del País Vasco divididos según la lengua materna en dos grupos, el grupo A (euskera) y el B (español o francés) tenían que elegir la emoción básica a la que correspondía lo escuchado. Según los resultados del test la emoción mejor percibida fue la tristeza y la peor el enfado, esto se debe a la mayor proximidad fonética entre ambas. En cuanto a la lengua materna de los participantes se observaron diferencias estadísticamente significativas, ya que los del grupo A presentaron mayor porcentaje de aciertos que los del grupo B. Según la procedencia, los que más aciertos tuvieron fueron los del País Vasco continental y los que menos los de Navarra; de todas formas, no se dan diferencias estadísticamente significativas referentes a esta variable.The aim of this study is to determine the influence of diatopic variation and first language on emotions perception in Basque language. For this purpose simulated emotions have to be recorded from some young women from Basque Country. The corpus features 24 oral recordings, is the same phrase and semantically neutral, with this corpus was designed a specific test for research. 349 young participants from seven Basque territories were divided into two groups according to first language, some of them belong to group A (Basque) and the others to group B (Spanish or French), and these participants had to identify the intended basic emotion from an audio. According to the test results, sadness is better perceived emotion, and anger the worst, because of they are phonetically more similar. With regard to participants’ first language, differences are statistically significant, inasmuch as A group participants correctly matched more items than group B. According to their source, Northern Basque Country correctly matched more items than the participants from Navarra; anyway the current results suggest that the differences are not statistically significant

Oinarrizko emozioen ezaugarri akustikoez

Lan honetan gazte euskaldun elebidunek oinarrizko emozio simulatuak egitean erabiltzen dituzten ezaugarri akustikoak ikertzen dira. Aztertu diren ezaugarri akustikoak oinarrizko maiztasuna edo f0, iraupena eta energia izan dira. Batetik, emozioek zer ezaugarri fonetiko dituzten jakin nahi izan da; bestetik, informatzaileen ama hizkuntzaren eta jatorri geografikoaren arabera bariazio fonetikorik gertatzen den ere aztertu da. Gure azterketa horiek burutu ahal izateko hizkuntzaren eremu osoko 115 informatzaileren corpusa erabili da. In this paper presented acoustic features that use bilingual young Basques to emit simulated basic emotions. For this analysis we used the following acoustic features: the fundamental frequency (F0), duration and energy. One of our main objectives was to determine the phonetic features in the production of each emotion.We have also analyzed whether the phonetic variation in relation to themother tongue and the geographical origin of the informants occurs.The research corpus was 115 respondents from across the field of language

Bertsobot: gizaki-robot arteko komunikazio eta elkarrekintzarako portaerak

216 p.Bertsobot: Robot-Portaerak Gizaki-Robot Arteko Komunikazio eta ElkarrekintzanBertsotan aritzeko gaitasuna erakutsiko duen robot autonomoa garatzeada gure ikerketa-lanaren helburu behinena. Bere egitekoa, bertsoa osatzekoinstrukzioak ahoz jaso, hauek prozesatu eta ahalik eta bertsorik egokienaosatu eta kantatzea litzateke, bertsolarien oholtza gaineko adierazkortasunmaila erakutsiz gorputzarekin. Robot-bertsolariak, gizaki eta roboten artekoelkarrekintza eta komunikazioan aurrera egiteko modua jarri nahi luke, lengoaianaturala erabiliz robot-gizaki arteko bi noranzkoko komunikazioan

Bertsobot: gizaki-robot arteko komunikazio eta elkarrekintzarako portaerak

216 p.Bertsobot: Robot-Portaerak Gizaki-Robot Arteko Komunikazio eta ElkarrekintzanBertsotan aritzeko gaitasuna erakutsiko duen robot autonomoa garatzeada gure ikerketa-lanaren helburu behinena. Bere egitekoa, bertsoa osatzekoinstrukzioak ahoz jaso, hauek prozesatu eta ahalik eta bertsorik egokienaosatu eta kantatzea litzateke, bertsolarien oholtza gaineko adierazkortasunmaila erakutsiz gorputzarekin. Robot-bertsolariak, gizaki eta roboten artekoelkarrekintza eta komunikazioan aurrera egiteko modua jarri nahi luke, lengoaianaturala erabiliz robot-gizaki arteko bi noranzkoko komunikazioan