Gépi beszéd természetességének növelése automatikus, beszédjel alapú hangsúlycímkéző algoritmussal

A minél természetesebb hangzás elérése a géppel előállított beszédben napjainkban is igen fontos kutatási terület. A hangzás természetességét számos más tényező mellett a prozódia is nagyban befolyásolja, ezért alapvető követelmény egy olyan, precízen annotált korpusz megléte, amely alapján gépi tanulással pontos generatív modelleket állíthatunk elő. A korpusz kézi címkézése költséges és hosszadalmas, még a prozódiai egységekre, hangsúlyokra vonatkozóan is, ráadásul nemzetközi tapasztalatok is igazolják, hogy a szakértő címkézők ítélete is szubjektív, hiszen a különböző szakértők által előállított hangsúlyozásra vonatkozó annotációk közötti átfedés ritkán haladja meg a 80%-ot. A fentiek miatt gyakran használnak automatikus címkéző eljárásokat. A hangsúlycímkézést leggyakrabban a szöveges átirat alapján végzik el, ami azonban szerényebb pontosságot szolgáltat az emberi annotáláshoz képest. Alternatívaként jelen munkában egy beszédjel alapú hangsúlycímkéző algoritmust valósítunk meg. Az így nyert hangsúlycímkézés ellenőrzésére hat (3-3 férfi és női) HMM-TTS rendszert tanítunk, majd szubjektív lehallgatási tesztekkel (CMOS) hasonlítjuk össze a rendszereket

Synthesising prosody with insufficient context

Prosody is a key component in human spoken communication, signalling emotion, attitude, information structure, intention, and other communicative functions through perceived variation in intonation, loudness, timing, and voice quality. However, the prosody in text-to-speech (TTS) systems is often monotonous and adds no additional meaning to the text. Synthesising prosody is difficult for several reasons: I focus on three challenges. First, prosody is embedded in the speech signal, making it hard to model with machine learning. Second, there is no clear orthography for prosody, meaning it is underspecified in the input text and making it difficult to directly control. Third, and most importantly, prosody is determined by the context of a speech act, which TTS systems do not, and will never, have complete access to. Without the context, we cannot say if prosody is appropriate or inappropriate. Context is wide ranging, but state-of-the-art TTS acoustic models only have access to phonetic information and limited structural information. Unfortunately, most context is either difficult, expensive, or impos- sible to collect. Thus, fully specified prosodic context will never exist. Given there is insufficient context, prosody synthesis is a one-to-many generative task: it necessitates the ability to produce multiple renditions. To provide this ability, I propose methods for prosody control in TTS, using either explicit prosody features, such as F0 and duration, or learnt prosody representations disentangled from the acoustics. I demonstrate that without control of the prosodic variability in speech, TTS will produce average prosody—i.e. flat and monotonous prosody. This thesis explores different options for operating these control mechanisms. Random sampling of a learnt distribution of prosody produces more varied and realistic prosody. Alternatively, a human-in-the-loop can operate the control mechanism—using their intuition to choose appropriate prosody. To improve the effectiveness of human-driven control, I design two novel approaches to make control mechanisms more human interpretable. Finally, it is important to take advantage of additional context as it becomes available. I present a novel framework that can incorporate arbitrary additional context, and demonstrate my state-of- the-art context-aware model of prosody using a pre-trained and fine-tuned language model. This thesis demonstrates empirically that appropriate prosody can be synthesised with insufficient context by accounting for unexplained prosodic variation

On looking into words (and beyond): Structures, Relations, Analyses

On Looking into Words is a wide-ranging volume spanning current research into word structure and morphology, with a focus on historical linguistics and linguistic theory. The papers are offered as a tribute to Stephen R. Anderson, the Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics at Yale, who is retiring at the end of the 2016-2017 academic year. The contributors are friends, colleagues, and former students of Professor Anderson, all important contributors to linguistics in their own right. As is typical for such volumes, the contributions span a variety of topics relating to the interests of the honorand. In this case, the central contributions that Anderson has made to so many areas of linguistics and cognitive science, drawing on synchronic and diachronic phenomena in diverse linguistic systems, are represented through the papers in the volume. The 26 papers that constitute this volume are unified by their discussion of the interplay between synchrony and diachrony, theory and empirical results, and the role of diachronic evidence in understanding the nature of language. Central concerns of the volume include morphological gaps, learnability, increases and declines in productivity, and the interaction of different components of the grammar. The papers deal with a range of linked synchronic and diachronic topics in phonology, morphology, and syntax (in particular, cliticization), and their implications for linguistic theory

On looking into words (and beyond): Structures, Relations, Analyses

On Looking into Words is a wide-ranging volume spanning current research into word structure and morphology, with a focus on historical linguistics and linguistic theory. The papers are offered as a tribute to Stephen R. Anderson, the Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics at Yale, who is retiring at the end of the 2016-2017 academic year. The contributors are friends, colleagues, and former students of Professor Anderson, all important contributors to linguistics in their own right. As is typical for such volumes, the contributions span a variety of topics relating to the interests of the honorand. In this case, the central contributions that Anderson has made to so many areas of linguistics and cognitive science, drawing on synchronic and diachronic phenomena in diverse linguistic systems, are represented through the papers in the volume. The 26 papers that constitute this volume are unified by their discussion of the interplay between synchrony and diachrony, theory and empirical results, and the role of diachronic evidence in understanding the nature of language. Central concerns of the volume include morphological gaps, learnability, increases and declines in productivity, and the interaction of different components of the grammar. The papers deal with a range of linked synchronic and diachronic topics in phonology, morphology, and syntax (in particular, cliticization), and their implications for linguistic theory

On looking into words (and beyond): Structures, Relations, Analyses

"On Looking into Words is a wide-ranging volume spanning current research into word structure and morphology, with a focus on historical linguistics and linguistic theory. The papers are offered as a tribute to Stephen R. Anderson, the Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics at Yale, who is retiring at the end of the 2016-2017 academic year. The contributors are friends, colleagues, and former students of Professor Anderson, all important contributors to linguistics in their own right. As is typical for such volumes, the contributions span a variety of topics relating to the interests of the honorand. In this case, the central contributions that Anderson has made to so many areas of linguistics and cognitive science, drawing on synchronic and diachronic phenomena in diverse linguistic systems, are represented through the papers in the volume. The 26 papers that constitute this volume are unified by their discussion of the interplay between synchrony and diachrony, theory and empirical results, and the role of diachronic evidence in understanding the nature of language. Central concerns of the volume include morphological gaps, learnability, increases and declines in productivity, and the interaction of different components of the grammar. The papers deal with a range of linked synchronic and diachronic topics in phonology, morphology, and syntax (in particular, cliticization), and their implications for linguistic theory.

On looking into words (and beyond): Structures, Relations, Analyses

On Looking into Words is a wide-ranging volume spanning current research into word structure and morphology, with a focus on historical linguistics and linguistic theory. The papers are offered as a tribute to Stephen R. Anderson, the Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics at Yale, who is retiring at the end of the 2016-2017 academic year. The contributors are friends, colleagues, and former students of Professor Anderson, all important contributors to linguistics in their own right. As is typical for such volumes, the contributions span a variety of topics relating to the interests of the honorand. In this case, the central contributions that Anderson has made to so many areas of linguistics and cognitive science, drawing on synchronic and diachronic phenomena in diverse linguistic systems, are represented through the papers in the volume. The 26 papers that constitute this volume are unified by their discussion of the interplay between synchrony and diachrony, theory and empirical results, and the role of diachronic evidence in understanding the nature of language. Central concerns of the volume include morphological gaps, learnability, increases and declines in productivity, and the interaction of different components of the grammar. The papers deal with a range of linked synchronic and diachronic topics in phonology, morphology, and syntax (in particular, cliticization), and their implications for linguistic theory

On looking into words (and beyond): Structures, Relations, Analyses

On Looking into Words is a wide-ranging volume spanning current research into word structure and morphology, with a focus on historical linguistics and linguistic theory. The papers are offered as a tribute to Stephen R. Anderson, the Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics at Yale, who is retiring at the end of the 2016-2017 academic year. The contributors are friends, colleagues, and former students of Professor Anderson, all important contributors to linguistics in their own right. As is typical for such volumes, the contributions span a variety of topics relating to the interests of the honorand. In this case, the central contributions that Anderson has made to so many areas of linguistics and cognitive science, drawing on synchronic and diachronic phenomena in diverse linguistic systems, are represented through the papers in the volume. The 26 papers that constitute this volume are unified by their discussion of the interplay between synchrony and diachrony, theory and empirical results, and the role of diachronic evidence in understanding the nature of language. Central concerns of the volume include morphological gaps, learnability, increases and declines in productivity, and the interaction of different components of the grammar. The papers deal with a range of linked synchronic and diachronic topics in phonology, morphology, and syntax (in particular, cliticization), and their implications for linguistic theory

On looking into words (and beyond): Structures, Relations, Analyses

On Looking into Words is a wide-ranging volume spanning current research into word structure and morphology, with a focus on historical linguistics and linguistic theory. The papers are offered as a tribute to Stephen R. Anderson, the Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics at Yale, who is retiring at the end of the 2016-2017 academic year. The contributors are friends, colleagues, and former students of Professor Anderson, all important contributors to linguistics in their own right. As is typical for such volumes, the contributions span a variety of topics relating to the interests of the honorand. In this case, the central contributions that Anderson has made to so many areas of linguistics and cognitive science, drawing on synchronic and diachronic phenomena in diverse linguistic systems, are represented through the papers in the volume. The 26 papers that constitute this volume are unified by their discussion of the interplay between synchrony and diachrony, theory and empirical results, and the role of diachronic evidence in understanding the nature of language. Central concerns of the volume include morphological gaps, learnability, increases and declines in productivity, and the interaction of different components of the grammar. The papers deal with a range of linked synchronic and diachronic topics in phonology, morphology, and syntax (in particular, cliticization), and their implications for linguistic theory