19 research outputs found
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
Speech Recognition
Chapters in the first part of the book cover all the essential speech processing techniques for building robust, automatic speech recognition systems: the representation for speech signals and the methods for speech-features extraction, acoustic and language modeling, efficient algorithms for searching the hypothesis space, and multimodal approaches to speech recognition. The last part of the book is devoted to other speech processing applications that can use the information from automatic speech recognition for speaker identification and tracking, for prosody modeling in emotion-detection systems and in other speech processing applications that are able to operate in real-world environments, like mobile communication services and smart homes
Sociolinguistic variation among Slovak immigrants in Edinburgh, Scotland
This thesis investigates sociolinguistic variation among highly fluent Slovak-English bilingual
women and also long-term immigrants residing in Edinburgh, Scotland. The present study
adds to existing literature on urban migratory experiences (Block, 2008; Forsberg, Lundell
and Bartning, 2015; Howley, 2015), comparing cross-cultural variation of immigrants’
speech with their local peers (Drummond, 2010, 2012; Meyerhoff et al., 2009), by exploring
linguistic and social constraints on language attitudes and accent acquisition among
bilingual Slovak immigrants.
Sociolinguistic interview data were obtained from 32 women, ages 22-46: 20 Slovak
immigrants, 8 Edinburgh Scottish participants, and 6 bilingual Slovak teachers of English in
Slovakia. By considering linguistic and social factors that influence Slovak immigrants’
variation, in this thesis I ask not just whether and to what extent do local language
communities shape immigrants’ identity, but also how their identity affects their language
attitudes and pronunciation. The thesis pays particular attention to how implicit and explicit
language attitudes combine to establish what Block (2008) called a “multidimensional”
identity in immigrants. Further investigation establishes a link between identity and
production (Redinger and Llamas, 2014; Podesva et al., 2015) by drawing on the variationist
sociolinguistic methodologies set out by Labov (1966, 2001, 2006).
Implicit language attitudes were collected via a Verbal Guise Task (VGT), during
which participants evaluated speakers of foreign and native English accents (Campbell-
Kibler, 2006; McKenzie, 2015; McKenzie and Carrie, 2018). Explicit attitudes were collected
via a questionnaire designed to elicit attitudes in a casual setting (Dörnyei and Csizér, 2012).
The combination of methodologies revealed that immigrant participants in the study held
complex attitudes and motivations in relation to their host country. The results for language
attitudes suggested that long-term Slovak immigrants experienced shifts to their identity
while residing in Scotland, with most adopting a transnational identity that made them
amenable to local language communities while maintaining connections with their home
country. Their identity represented a degree of integration with Scottish communities, but
transnational immigrants often felt separate from both home and host countries as a result.
The present study also explores connection between identity and production which
is now well recognised (Kobiałka, 2016; Regan, 2016; Regan and Ni Chasaide, 2010;
Bucholtz, 2011). Immigrant participants’ pronunciations of FACE and GOAT vowel lexical sets
(Wells, 1982) were evaluated in comparison to two language groups that represented
different standards of pronunciation: native Scottish participants in Edinburgh, with more
monophthongal pronunciations (SchĂĽtzler, 2015); and English-Slovak bilinguals residing in
Trnava, Slovakia, whose vowel productions were highly diphthongal and similar to Received
Pronunciation (RP) constructions. Comparative study of pronunciations revealed that the
immigrants’ FACE and GOAT realisations were relatively more monophthongal than the non-immigrant
Slovak group, yet more diphthongal than the native Scottish group – effectively
making immigrant Slovaks’ mean pronunciations separate and distinct from both native
standard varieties. However, the immigrant’s pronunciations varied widely, and data
modelling revealed associations between key social factors and pronunciation. Settings of
high formality, strong European and Slovak identities, and intentions to return to Slovakia
were associated with relatively more diphthongal pronunciations. Decreased formality,
strong Scottish identities, and lack of formal education before immigration were associated
with relatively more monophthongal pronunciations.
Key findings in the study reinforce observations of multi-cultural identities in longterm
Slovak immigrants. Drawing on work that explores variation in language attitudes
(Clark and Schleef, 2010) and production in migratory settings (Meyerhoff and Schleef,
2014), I argue that there is a tendency for immigrants to shape their multi-cultural identities
in response to linguistic and social contexts. However, internal contexts such as self-definition
were equally important in shaping identities, which in turn affected language
attitudes and pronunciation