1,982 research outputs found
Multi-Tier Annotations in the Verbmobil Corpus
In very large and diverse scientific projects where as different groups as linguists and engineers with different intentions work on the same signal data or its orthographic transcript and annotate new valuable information, it will not be easy to build a homogeneous corpus. We will describe how this can be achieved, considering the fact that some of these annotations have not been updated properly, or are based on erroneous or deliberately changed versions of the basis transcription. We used an algorithm similar to dynamic programming to detect differences between the transcription on which the annotation depends and the reference transcription for the whole corpus. These differences are automatically mapped on a set of repair operations for the transcriptions such as splitting compound words and merging neighbouring words. On the basis of these operations the correction process in the annotation is carried out. It always depends on the type of the annotation as well as on the position and the nature of the difference, whether a correction can be carried out automatically or has to be fixed manually. Finally we present a investigation in which we exploit the multi-tier annotations of the Verbmobil corpus to find out how breathing is correlated with prosodic-syntactic boundaries and dialog acts. 1
Prosodic Event Recognition using Convolutional Neural Networks with Context Information
This paper demonstrates the potential of convolutional neural networks (CNN)
for detecting and classifying prosodic events on words, specifically pitch
accents and phrase boundary tones, from frame-based acoustic features. Typical
approaches use not only feature representations of the word in question but
also its surrounding context. We show that adding position features indicating
the current word benefits the CNN. In addition, this paper discusses the
generalization from a speaker-dependent modelling approach to a
speaker-independent setup. The proposed method is simple and efficient and
yields strong results not only in speaker-dependent but also
speaker-independent cases.Comment: Interspeech 2017 4 pages, 1 figur
Acoustic, Morphological, and Functional Aspects of `yeah/ja' in Dutch, English and German
We explore different forms and functions of one of the most common feedback expressions in Dutch, English, and German, namely `yeah/ja' which is known for its multi-functionality and ambiguous usage in dialog. For example, it can be used as a yes-answer, or as a pure continuer, or as a way to show agreement. In addition, `yeah/ja' can be used in its single form, but it can also be combined with other particles, forming multi-word expressions, especially in Dutch and German. We have found substantial differences on the morpho-lexical level between the three related languages which enhances the ambiguous character of `yeah/ja'. An explorative analysis of the prosodic features of `yeah/ja' has shown that mainly a higher intensity is used to signal speaker incipiency across the inspected languages
Prosody-Based Automatic Segmentation of Speech into Sentences and Topics
A crucial step in processing speech audio data for information extraction,
topic detection, or browsing/playback is to segment the input into sentence and
topic units. Speech segmentation is challenging, since the cues typically
present for segmenting text (headers, paragraphs, punctuation) are absent in
spoken language. We investigate the use of prosody (information gleaned from
the timing and melody of speech) for these tasks. Using decision tree and
hidden Markov modeling techniques, we combine prosodic cues with word-based
approaches, and evaluate performance on two speech corpora, Broadcast News and
Switchboard. Results show that the prosodic model alone performs on par with,
or better than, word-based statistical language models -- for both true and
automatically recognized words in news speech. The prosodic model achieves
comparable performance with significantly less training data, and requires no
hand-labeling of prosodic events. Across tasks and corpora, we obtain a
significant improvement over word-only models using a probabilistic combination
of prosodic and lexical information. Inspection reveals that the prosodic
models capture language-independent boundary indicators described in the
literature. Finally, cue usage is task and corpus dependent. For example, pause
and pitch features are highly informative for segmenting news speech, whereas
pause, duration and word-based cues dominate for natural conversation.Comment: 30 pages, 9 figures. To appear in Speech Communication 32(1-2),
Special Issue on Accessing Information in Spoken Audio, September 200
The UPC Text-to-Speech System for Spanish and Catalan
This paper summarizes the text-to-speech system that has been developed in the Speech Group of the Universitat PolitĂšcnica de Catalunya (UPC). The system is composed of a core and different interfaces so that it is compatible for research, for telephone applications (either CTI boards or standard ISDN PC cards supporting CAPI), and Windows applications developed using Microsoft SAPI. The paper reviews the system making
emphasis in the parts of the system which are language
dependent and which allow the reading of bilingual text (Spanish
and Catalan). The paper also presents new approaches in prosodic modeling (segmental duration modeling) and generation of the database of speech segments, which have been introduced last year.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
Emotion Recognition from Acted and Spontaneous Speech
DizertaÄnĂ prĂĄce se zabĂœvĂĄ rozpoznĂĄnĂm emoÄnĂho stavu mluvÄĂch z ĆeÄovĂ©ho signĂĄlu. PrĂĄce je rozdÄlena do dvou hlavnĂch ÄastĂ, prvnĂ ÄĂĄst popisuju navrĆŸenĂ© metody pro rozpoznĂĄnĂ emoÄnĂho stavu z hranĂœch databĂĄzĂ. V rĂĄmci tĂ©to ÄĂĄsti jsou pĆedstaveny vĂœsledky rozpoznĂĄnĂ pouĆŸitĂm dvou rĆŻznĂœch databĂĄzĂ s rĆŻznĂœmi jazyky. HlavnĂmi pĆĂnosy tĂ©to ÄĂĄsti je detailnĂ analĂœza rozsĂĄhlĂ© ĆĄkĂĄly rĆŻznĂœch pĆĂznakĆŻ zĂskanĂœch z ĆeÄovĂ©ho signĂĄlu, nĂĄvrh novĂœch klasifikaÄnĂch architektur jako je napĆĂklad âemoÄnĂ pĂĄrovĂĄnĂâ a nĂĄvrh novĂ© metody pro mapovĂĄnĂ diskrĂ©tnĂch emoÄnĂch stavĆŻ do dvou dimenzionĂĄlnĂho prostoru. DruhĂĄ ÄĂĄst se zabĂœvĂĄ rozpoznĂĄnĂm emoÄnĂch stavĆŻ z databĂĄze spontĂĄnnĂ ĆeÄi, kterĂĄ byla zĂskĂĄna ze zĂĄznamĆŻ hovorĆŻ z reĂĄlnĂœch call center. Poznatky z analĂœzy a nĂĄvrhu metod rozpoznĂĄnĂ z hranĂ© ĆeÄi byly vyuĆŸity pro nĂĄvrh novĂ©ho systĂ©mu pro rozpoznĂĄnĂ sedmi spontĂĄnnĂch emoÄnĂch stavĆŻ. JĂĄdrem navrĆŸenĂ©ho pĆĂstupu je komplexnĂ klasifikaÄnĂ architektura zaloĆŸena na fĂșzi rĆŻznĂœch systĂ©mĆŻ. PrĂĄce se dĂĄle zabĂœvĂĄ vlivem emoÄnĂho stavu mluvÄĂho na ĂșspÄĆĄnosti rozpoznĂĄnĂ pohlavĂ a nĂĄvrhem systĂ©mu pro automatickou detekci ĂșspÄĆĄnĂœch hovorĆŻ v call centrech na zĂĄkladÄ analĂœzy parametrĆŻ dialogu mezi ĂșÄastnĂky telefonnĂch hovorĆŻ.Doctoral thesis deals with emotion recognition from speech signals. The thesis is divided into two main parts; the first part describes proposed approaches for emotion recognition using two different multilingual databases of acted emotional speech. The main contributions of this part are detailed analysis of a big set of acoustic features, new classification schemes for vocal emotion recognition such as âemotion couplingâ and new method for mapping discrete emotions into two-dimensional space. The second part of this thesis is devoted to emotion recognition using multilingual databases of spontaneous emotional speech, which is based on telephone records obtained from real call centers. The knowledge gained from experiments with emotion recognition from acted speech was exploited to design a new approach for classifying seven emotional states. The core of the proposed approach is a complex classification architecture based on the fusion of different systems. The thesis also examines the influence of speakerâs emotional state on gender recognition performance and proposes system for automatic identification of successful phone calls in call center by means of dialogue features.
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