Production and perception of tones by Dutch learners of Mandarin

The function of pitch movements varies across languages. Tone languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, use pitch configurations to differentiate between word forms. For non-tone languages (such as Dutch and English), pitch information is mainly used at the post-lexical level, e.g., to signal sentential prominence or delimit prosodic constituents. Therefore, learning to use lexical tones is always difficult for non-tone second language learners of Mandarin who are not familiar with using pitch information in a lexically contrastive way. This thesis investigates various aspects of production and perception of tones by beginning and advanced Dutch learners of Mandarin. Through a series of four experiments, this thesis examines the developmental path of Dutch learners of Mandarin at the university level in their acquisition of fine-grained tonal coarticulation patterns, distribution of attention between segments and tones, phonological processing of tones and using tonal information in spoken word recognition. The mechanisms underlying the learners’ tone acquisition are discussed with reference to current theories and models of second language acquisition and spoken word recognition. China Scholarship Council Leiden University Centre for LinguisticsTheoretical and Experimental Linguistic

Models and analysis of vocal emissions for biomedical applications

This book of Proceedings collects the papers presented at the 3rd International Workshop on Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications, MAVEBA 2003, held 10-12 December 2003, Firenze, Italy. The workshop is organised every two years, and aims to stimulate contacts between specialists active in research and industrial developments, in the area of voice analysis for biomedical applications. The scope of the Workshop includes all aspects of voice modelling and analysis, ranging from fundamental research to all kinds of biomedical applications and related established and advanced technologies

A Silent-Speech Interface using Electro-Optical Stomatography

Sprachtechnologie ist eine große und wachsende Industrie, die das Leben von technologieinteressierten Nutzern auf zahlreichen Wegen bereichert. Viele potenzielle Nutzer werden jedoch ausgeschlossen: Nämlich alle Sprecher, die nur schwer oder sogar gar nicht Sprache produzieren können. Silent-Speech Interfaces bieten einen Weg, mit Maschinen durch ein bequemes sprachgesteuertes Interface zu kommunizieren ohne dafür akustische Sprache zu benötigen. Sie können außerdem prinzipiell eine Ersatzstimme stellen, indem sie die intendierten Äußerungen, die der Nutzer nur still artikuliert, künstlich synthetisieren. Diese Dissertation stellt ein neues Silent-Speech Interface vor, das auf einem neu entwickelten Messsystem namens Elektro-Optischer Stomatografie und einem neuartigen parametrischen Vokaltraktmodell basiert, das die Echtzeitsynthese von Sprache basierend auf den gemessenen Daten ermöglicht. Mit der Hardware wurden Studien zur Einzelworterkennung durchgeführt, die den Stand der Technik in der intra- und inter-individuellen Genauigkeit erreichten und übertrafen. Darüber hinaus wurde eine Studie abgeschlossen, in der die Hardware zur Steuerung des Vokaltraktmodells in einer direkten Artikulation-zu-Sprache-Synthese verwendet wurde. Während die Verständlichkeit der Synthese von Vokalen sehr hoch eingeschätzt wurde, ist die Verständlichkeit von Konsonanten und kontinuierlicher Sprache sehr schlecht. Vielversprechende Möglichkeiten zur Verbesserung des Systems werden im Ausblick diskutiert.:Statement of authorship iii Abstract v List of Figures vii List of Tables xi Acronyms xiii 1. Introduction 1 1.1. The concept of a Silent-Speech Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.2. Structure of this work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2. Fundamentals of phonetics 7 2.1. Components of the human speech production system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.2. Vowel sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2.3. Consonantal sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2.4. Acoustic properties of speech sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 2.5. Coarticulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 2.6. Phonotactics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.7. Summary and implications for the design of a Silent-Speech Interface (SSI) . . . . . . . 21 3. Articulatory data acquisition techniques in Silent-Speech Interfaces 25 3.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 3.2. Scope of the literature review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 3.3. Video Recordings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 3.4. Ultrasonography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 3.5. Electromyography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 3.6. Permanent-Magnetic Articulography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 3.7. Electromagnetic Articulography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 3.8. Radio waves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 3.9. Palatography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 3.10.Conclusion and Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 4. Electro-Optical Stomatography 55 4.1. Contact sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 4.2. Optical distance sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 4.3. Lip sensor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 4.4. Sensor Unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 4.5. Control Unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 4.6. Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 5. Articulation-to-Text 99 5.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 5.2. Command word recognition pilot study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 5.3. Command word recognition small-scale study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 6. Articulation-to-Speech 109 6.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 6.2. Articulatory synthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 6.3. The six point vocal tract model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 6.4. Objective evaluation of the vocal tract model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 6.5. Perceptual evaluation of the vocal tract model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 6.6. Direct synthesis using EOS to control the vocal tract model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 6.7. Pitch and voicing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 7. Summary and outlook 145 7.1. Summary of the contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 7.2. Outlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 A. Overview of the International Phonetic Alphabet 151 B. Mathematical proofs and derivations 153 B.1. Combinatoric calculations illustrating the reduction of possible syllables using phonotactics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 B.2. Signal Averaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 B.3. Effect of the contact sensor area on the conductance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 B.4. Calculation of the forward current for the OP280V diode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 C. Schematics and layouts 157 C.1. Schematics of the control unit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 C.2. Layout of the control unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 C.3. Bill of materials of the control unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 C.4. Schematics of the sensor unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 C.5. Layout of the sensor unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 C.6. Bill of materials of the sensor unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 D. Sensor unit assembly 169 E. Firmware flow and data protocol 177 F. Palate file format 181 G. Supplemental material regarding the vocal tract model 183 H. Articulation-to-Speech: Optimal hyperparameters 189 Bibliography 191Speech technology is a major and growing industry that enriches the lives of technologically-minded people in a number of ways. Many potential users are, however, excluded: Namely, all speakers who cannot easily or even at all produce speech. Silent-Speech Interfaces offer a way to communicate with a machine by a convenient speech recognition interface without the need for acoustic speech. They also can potentially provide a full replacement voice by synthesizing the intended utterances that are only silently articulated by the user. To that end, the speech movements need to be captured and mapped to either text or acoustic speech. This dissertation proposes a new Silent-Speech Interface based on a newly developed measurement technology called Electro-Optical Stomatography and a novel parametric vocal tract model to facilitate real-time speech synthesis based on the measured data. The hardware was used to conduct command word recognition studies reaching state-of-the-art intra- and inter-individual performance. Furthermore, a study on using the hardware to control the vocal tract model in a direct articulation-to-speech synthesis loop was also completed. While the intelligibility of synthesized vowels was high, the intelligibility of consonants and connected speech was quite poor. Promising ways to improve the system are discussed in the outlook.:Statement of authorship iii Abstract v List of Figures vii List of Tables xi Acronyms xiii 1. Introduction 1 1.1. The concept of a Silent-Speech Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.2. Structure of this work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2. Fundamentals of phonetics 7 2.1. Components of the human speech production system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.2. Vowel sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2.3. Consonantal sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2.4. Acoustic properties of speech sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 2.5. Coarticulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 2.6. Phonotactics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.7. Summary and implications for the design of a Silent-Speech Interface (SSI) . . . . . . . 21 3. Articulatory data acquisition techniques in Silent-Speech Interfaces 25 3.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 3.2. Scope of the literature review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 3.3. Video Recordings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 3.4. Ultrasonography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 3.5. Electromyography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 3.6. Permanent-Magnetic Articulography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 3.7. Electromagnetic Articulography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 3.8. Radio waves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 3.9. Palatography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 3.10.Conclusion and Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 4. Electro-Optical Stomatography 55 4.1. Contact sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 4.2. Optical distance sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 4.3. Lip sensor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 4.4. Sensor Unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 4.5. Control Unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 4.6. Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 5. Articulation-to-Text 99 5.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 5.2. Command word recognition pilot study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 5.3. Command word recognition small-scale study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 6. Articulation-to-Speech 109 6.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 6.2. Articulatory synthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 6.3. The six point vocal tract model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 6.4. Objective evaluation of the vocal tract model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 6.5. Perceptual evaluation of the vocal tract model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 6.6. Direct synthesis using EOS to control the vocal tract model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 6.7. Pitch and voicing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 7. Summary and outlook 145 7.1. Summary of the contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 7.2. Outlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 A. Overview of the International Phonetic Alphabet 151 B. Mathematical proofs and derivations 153 B.1. Combinatoric calculations illustrating the reduction of possible syllables using phonotactics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 B.2. Signal Averaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 B.3. Effect of the contact sensor area on the conductance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 B.4. Calculation of the forward current for the OP280V diode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 C. Schematics and layouts 157 C.1. Schematics of the control unit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 C.2. Layout of the control unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 C.3. Bill of materials of the control unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 C.4. Schematics of the sensor unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 C.5. Layout of the sensor unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 C.6. Bill of materials of the sensor unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 D. Sensor unit assembly 169 E. Firmware flow and data protocol 177 F. Palate file format 181 G. Supplemental material regarding the vocal tract model 183 H. Articulation-to-Speech: Optimal hyperparameters 189 Bibliography 19

The Processing of Emotional Sentences by Young and Older Adults: A Visual World Eye-movement Study

Carminati MN, Knoeferle P. The Processing of Emotional Sentences by Young and Older Adults: A Visual World Eye-movement Study. Presented at the Architectures and Mechanisms of Language and Processing (AMLaP), Riva del Garda, Italy

Multi-modal response generation.

Wong Ka Ho.Thesis submitted in: October 2005.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 163-170).Abstracts in English and Chinese.Abstract --- p.2Acknowledgements --- p.5Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.10Chapter 1.1 --- Multi-modal and Multi-media --- p.10Chapter 1.2 --- Overview --- p.11Chapter 1.3 --- Thesis Goal --- p.13Chapter 1.4 --- Thesis Outline --- p.15Chapter 2 --- Background --- p.16Chapter 2.1 --- Multi-modal Fission --- p.17Chapter 2.2 --- Multi-modal Data collection --- p.21Chapter 2.2.1 --- Collection Time --- p.21Chapter 2.2.2 --- Annotation and Tools --- p.21Chapter 2.2.3 --- Knowledge of Multi-modal Using --- p.21Chapter 2.3 --- Text-to-audiovisual Speech System --- p.22Chapter 2.3.1 --- Different. Approaches to Generate a Talking Heading --- p.23Chapter 2.3.2 --- Sub-tasks in Animating a Talking Head --- p.25Chapter 2.4 --- Modality Selection --- p.27Chapter 2.4.1 --- Rules-based approach --- p.27Chapter 2.4.2 --- Plan-based approach --- p.28Chapter 2.4.3 --- Feature-based approach --- p.29Chapter 2.4.4 --- Corpus-based approach --- p.30Chapter 2.5 --- Summary --- p.30Chapter 3 --- Information Domain --- p.31Chapter 3.1 --- Multi-media Information --- p.31Chapter 3.2 --- "Task Goals, Dialog Acts, Concepts and Information Type" --- p.32Chapter 3.2.1 --- Task Goals and Dialog Acts --- p.32Chapter 3.2.2 --- Concepts and Information Type --- p.36Chapter 3.3 --- User's Task and Scenario --- p.37Chapter 3.4 --- Chapter Summary --- p.38Chapter 4 --- Multi-modal Response Data Collection --- p.41Chapter 4.1 --- Data Collection Setup --- p.42Chapter 4.1.1 --- Multi-modal Input Setup --- p.43Chapter 4.1.2 --- Multi-modal Output Setup --- p.43Chapter 4.2 --- Procedure --- p.45Chapter 4.2.1 --- Precaution --- p.45Chapter 4.2.2 --- Recording --- p.50Chapter 4.2.3 --- Data Size and Type --- p.50Chapter 4.3 --- Annotation --- p.52Chapter 4.3.1 --- Extensible Multi-Modal Markup Language --- p.52Chapter 4.3.2 --- "Mobile, Multi-biometric and Multi-modal Annotation" --- p.53Chapter 4.4 --- Problems in the Wizard-of-Oz Setup --- p.56Chapter 4.4.1 --- Lack of Knowledge --- p.57Chapter 4.4.2 --- Time Deficiency --- p.57Chapter 4.4.3 --- Information Availability --- p.58Chapter 4.4.4 --- Operation Delay --- p.59Chapter 4.4.5 --- Lack of Modalities --- p.59Chapter 4.5 --- Data Optimization --- p.61Chapter 4.5.1 --- Precaution --- p.61Chapter 4.5.2 --- Procedures --- p.61Chapter 4.5.3 --- Data Size in Expert Design Responses --- p.63Chapter 4.6 --- Analysis and Discussion --- p.65Chapter 4.6.1 --- Multi-modal Usage --- p.67Chapter 4.6.2 --- Modality Combination --- p.67Chapter 4.6.3 --- Deictic term --- p.68Chapter 4.6.4 --- Task Goal and Dialog Acts --- p.71Chapter 4.6.5 --- Information Type --- p.72Chapter 4.7 --- Chapter Summary --- p.74Chapter 5 --- Text-to-Audiovisual Speech System --- p.76Chapter 5.1 --- Phonemes and Visemes --- p.77Chapter 5.2 --- Three-dimensional Facial Animation --- p.82Chapter 5.2.1 --- Three-dimensional (3D) Face Model --- p.82Chapter 5.2.2 --- The Blending Process for Animation --- p.84Chapter 5.2.3 --- Connectivity between Visemes --- p.85Chapter 5.3 --- User Perception Experiments --- p.87Chapter 5.4 --- Applications and Extension --- p.89Chapter 5.4.1 --- Multilingual Extension and Potential Applications --- p.89Chapter 5.5 --- Talking Head in Multi-modal Dialogue System --- p.90Chapter 5.5.1 --- Prosody --- p.93Chapter 5.5.2 --- Body Gesture --- p.94Chapter 5.6 --- Chapter Summary --- p.94Chapter 6 --- Modality Selection and Implementation --- p.98Chapter 6.1 --- Multi-modal Response Examples --- p.98Chapter 6.1.1 --- Single Concept-value Example --- p.99Chapter 6.1.2 --- Two Concept-values with Different Information Types --- p.102Chapter 6.1.3 --- Multiple Concept-values with Same Information Types Example --- p.103Chapter 6.2 --- Heuristic Rules for Modality Selection --- p.105Chapter 6.2.1 --- General Principles --- p.106Chapter 6.2.2 --- Heuristic rules --- p.107Chapter 6.2.3 --- Temporal Coordination for Synchronization --- p.109Chapter 6.2.4 --- Physical Layout --- p.110Chapter 6.2.5 --- Deictic Term --- p.111Chapter 6.2.6 --- Example --- p.111Chapter 6.3 --- Spoken Content Generation --- p.113Chapter 6.4 --- Chapter Summary --- p.115Chapter 7 --- Conclusions and Future Work --- p.117Chapter 7.1 --- Summary --- p.117Chapter 7.2 --- Contributions --- p.118Chapter 7.3 --- Future work --- p.119Chapter A --- XML Schema for M3 Markup Language --- p.123Chapter B --- M3ML Examples --- p.128Chapter C --- Domain-Specific Task Goals in the Hong Kong Tourism Do- main --- p.131Chapter D --- Dialog Acts for User Request in the Hong Kong Tourism Do- main --- p.133Chapter E --- Dialog Acts for System Response in the Hong Kong Tourism Domain --- p.137Chapter F --- Information Type and Concepts --- p.141Chapter G --- Concepts --- p.143Bibliography --- p.14