On the naturalness of software

Natural languages like English are rich, complex, and powerful. The highly creative and graceful use of languages like English and Tamil, by masters like Shakespeare and Avvaiyar, can certainly delight and inspire. But in practice, given cognitive constraints and the exigencies of daily life, most human utterances are far simpler and much more repetitive and predictable. In fact, these utterances can be very usefully modeled using modern statistical methods. This fact has led to the phenomenal success of statistical approaches to speech recognition, natural language translation, question-answering, and text mining and comprehension. We begin with the conjecture that most software is also natural, in the sense that it is created by humans at work, with all the attendant constraints and limitations---and thus, like natural language, it is also likely to be repetitive and predictable. We then proceed to ask whether (a) code can be usefully modeled by statistical language models and (b) such models can be leveraged to support software engineers. Using the widely adopted n-gram model, we provide empirical evidence supportive of a positive answer to both these questions. We show that code is also very regular, and, in fact, even more so than natural languages. As an example use of the model, we have developed a simple code completion engine for Java that, despite its simplicity, already improves Eclipse's completion capability. We conclude the paper by laying out a vision for future research in this area

Development of a Yoruba Text-to-Speech System Using Festival

This paper presents a Text-to-Speech (TTS) synthesis system for Yorúbà language using the open-source Festival TTS engine. Yorúbà being a resource scarce language like most African languages however presents a major challenge to conventional speech synthesis approaches, which typically require large corpora for the training of such system. Speech data were recorded in a quiet environment with a noise cancelling microphone on a typical multimedia computer system using the Speech Filing System software (SFS), analysed and annotated using PRAAT speech processing software. Evaluation of the system was done using the intelligibility and naturalness metrics through mean opinion score. The result shows that the level of intelligibility and naturalness of the system on word-level is 55.56% and 50% respectively, but the system performs poorly for both intelligibility and naturalness test on sentence level. Hence, there is a need for further research to improve the quality of the synthesized speech. Keywords: Text-to-Speech, Festival, Yorúbà, Syllabl

Efficiency of a mathematical model in generating CAD/CAM-partial crowns with natural tooth morphology

The "biogeneric tooth model” can be used for computer-aided design (CAD) of the occlusal surface of dental restorations. From digital 3D-data, it automatically retrieves a morphology matching the natural surface left after preparation. This study evaluates the potential of this method for generating well-matched and well-adjusted CAD/computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) fabricated partial crowns. Twelve models with partial crown preparations were mounted into an articulator. Partial crowns were designed with the Cerec 3D CAD software based on the biogeneric tooth model (Biog.CAD) and, for control, with a conventional data-based Cerec 3D CAD software (Conv.CAD). The design time was measured, and the naturalness of the morphology was visually assessed. The restorations were milled, cemented on the models, and the vertical discrepancy and the time for final occlusal adjustment were measured. The Biog.CAD software offered a significantly higher naturalness (up to 225 to 11 scores) and was significantly faster by 251 (±78) s in designing partial crowns (p < 0.01) compared to Conv.CAD software. Vertical discrepancy, 0.52 (±0.28) mm for Conv.CAD and 0.46 (±0.19) mm for Biog.CAD, and occlusal adjustment time, 118 (±132) s for Conv.CAD and 102 (±77) s for Biog.CAD, did not differ significantly. In conclusion, the biogeneric tooth model is able to generate occlusal morphology of partial crowns in a fully automated process with higher naturalness compared to conventional interactive CAD softwar

The Blizzard Challenge 2009

The Blizzard Challenge 2009 was the fifth annual Blizzard Challenge. As in 2008, UK English and Mandarin Chinese were the chosen languages for the 2009 Challenge. The English corpus was the same one used in 2008. The Mandarin corpus was provided by iFLYTEK. As usual, participants with limited resources or limited experience in these languages had the option of using unaligned labels that were provided for both corpora and for the test sentences. An accent-specific pronunciation dictionary was also available for the English speaker. This year, the tasks were organised in the form of ‘hubs ’ and ‘spokes ’ where each hub task involved building a general-purpose voice and each spoke task involved building a voice for a specific application. A set of test sentences was released to participants, who were given a limited time in which to synthesise them and submit the synthetic speech. An online listening test was conducted to evaluate naturalness, intelligibility, degree of similarity to the original speaker and, for one of the spoke tasks, “appropriateness.

Synthesis using speaker adaptation from speech recognition DB

This paper deals with the creation of multiple voices from a Hidden Markov Model based speech synthesis system (HTS). More than 150 Catalan synthetic voices were built using Hidden Markov Models (HMM) and speaker adaptation techniques. Training data for building a Speaker-Independent (SI) model were selected from both a general purpose speech synthesis database (FestCat;) and a database design ed for training Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems (Catalan SpeeCon database). The SpeeCon database was also used to adapt the SI model to different speakers. Using an ASR designed database for TTS purposes provided many different amateur voices, with few minutes of recordings not performed in studio conditions. This paper shows how speaker adaptation techniques provide the right tools to generate multiple voices with very few adaptation data. A subjective evaluation was carried out to assess the intelligibility and naturalness of the generated voices as well as the similarity of the adapted voices to both the original speaker and the average voice from the SI model.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Naturalness and light Higgsinos: why ILC is the right machine for SUSY discovery

Radiatively-driven natural supersymmetry, a theoretically and experimentally well-motivated framework, centers around the predicted existence of four light, nearly mass-degenerate Higgsinos with mass $\sim 100-200$ GeV (not too far above $m_Z$). The small mass splittings amongst the higgsinos, typically 4-20 GeV, results in very little visible energy arising from decays of the heavier higgsinos. Given that other SUSY particles are considerably heavy, this makes detection challenging at hadron colliders. On the other hand, the clean environment of an electron-positron collider with $\sqrt{s}>2m_{higgsino}$ would enable a decisive search of these required higgsinos, and thus either the discovery or exclusion of natural SUSY. We present a detailed simulation study of precision measurements of higgsino masses and production cross sections at $\sqrt{s}$ = 500 GeV of the proposed International Linear Collider currently under consideration for construction in Japan. The study is based on a Geant4 simulation of the International Large Detector concept. We examine several benchmark points just beyond the HL-LHC reach, with four light higgsinos directly accessible by the ILC, and the mass differences between the lightest SUSY particle and the heavier states ranging from about 4 to 20 GeV. It can be shown that their masses and production cross sections can be precisely measured to approximately 1\% precision or better. These precise measurements allow for extracting the underlying weak scale SUSY parameters, giving predictions for the masses of heavier SUSY states. These provide motivation for future high-energy colliders. Additionally, dark matter properties may be derived. Evolution of the measured gaugino masses to high energies should allow testing the hypothesis of gaugino mass unification.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures; to appear in the proceedings for EPS-HEP2017, 5-12 July 2017, Venice, Ital