BEA – A multifunctional Hungarian spoken language database

In diverse areas of linguistics, the demand for studying actual language use is on the increase. The aim of developing a phonetically-based multi-purpose database of Hungarian spontaneous speech, dubbed BEA2, is to accumulate a large amount of spontaneous speech of various types together with sentence repetition and reading. Presently, the recorded material of BEA amounts to 260 hours produced by 280 present-day Budapest speakers (ages between 20 and 90, 168 females and 112 males), providing also annotated materials for various types of research and practical applications

Saudi Accented Arabic Voice Bank

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to present an Arabic speech database that represents Arabic native speakers from all the cities of Saudi Arabia. The database is called the Saudi Accented Arabic Voice Bank (SAAVB). Preparing the prompt sheets, selecting the right speakers and transcribing their speech are some of the challenges that faced the project team. The procedures that meet these challenges are highlighted. SAAVB consists of 1033 speakers speak in Modern Standard Arabic with a Saudi accent. The SAAVB content is analyzed and the results are illustrated. The content was verified internally and externally by IBM Cairo and can be used to train speech engines such as automatic speech recognition and speaker verification systems

Intonation & Prosodic Structure in Beaver (Athabaskan) - Explorations on the language of the Danezaa

This dissertation reports on qualitative and quantitative investigations on the intonation and the prosodic structure of Beaver, an endangered Athabaskan language of Northwest Canada. The focus of the study is on the Northern Alberta dialect of Beaver, which has lexical tone and is a high marking Athabaskan language. The theoretical framework of the analysis is the Autosegmental Metrical (AM) theory. Following some background on intonation and prosody as well as the theoretical modelling, we summarize contributions dealing with intonation in languages that share certain features with Beaver, i.e. tone languages, polysynthetic languages and finally the related Athabaskan languages. After a brief introduction to the grammatical structure and the sociolinguistic situation of Northern Alberta Beaver, the database of the present study is introduced. It consists of narratives and task oriented dialogues as well as recordings elicited with stimuli sets. In the domain of intonation and prosody, three topics are investigated in detail. First, domain initial prosodic strengthening is analyzed. We show that a boundary initial position at higher constituents of the prosodic hierarchy has a lengthening effect on VOT of both aspirated and unaspirated plosives, while nasals are shortened in this context. Additionally, effects of morphological category (stem vs. prefix) and intervocalic position � two mechanisms that have been described for other Athabaskan languages � are also attested for Beaver to some degree. Second, the intonational tones that have been found in the corpus are analyzed within the AM theory. In Northern Alberta Beaver, boundary tones and phrase accents make up the intonational inventory. Most notably, an initial phrase accent is used to mark contrast, which is a device that has not been reported for the marking of information structure in other languages. Lastly, the interaction of information structure with pitch range in complex noun phrases is tested in a controlled experiment. Here, we find that pitch range is significantly wider for new information than for given, which is due to a raising of the top line, while the baseline is not affected to the same extend

Essential Speech and Language Technology for Dutch: Results by the STEVIN-programme

Computational Linguistics; Germanic Languages; Artificial Intelligence (incl. Robotics); Computing Methodologie

“<i>Hama</i>”? Reduced pronunciations in non-native natural speech obstruct high-school students’ comprehension at lower processing levels

Native speakers ‘reduce’ their pronunciations, i.e., they shorten and merge words. For instance, German native speakers may say “hama” for “haben wir” (‘have-we’). We examined to what extent such reductions are problematic for adolescent learners of a second language, after four years of high-school training; and whether the problems can be related to inadequate bottom-up and top-down processing. For this, 39 Dutch and 38 German adolescents heard either reduced or unreduced German full phrases and part-phrases (phrase-intelligibility task) and words (lexical decision task). The results show that (1) Learners perceive non-native reduced speech less accurately than unreduced speech and also judge it as less intelligible; (2) This reduced-form disadvantage occurs separately from factors such as speech rate, orthography and voice; (3) The disadvantage for non-native listeners is substantial and larger than that in native listeners. Therefore, it probably reflects a lack of experience with reduced (i.e., real-life) speech; and (4) Non-native reductions induce at least inadequate bottom-up processing in learners, and may make top-down processing less accessible. We interpret the findings as supporting the idea that experience with variants (here: reduced variants) is necessary to strengthen linguistic (word) representations

Methodological Tools for Linguistic Description and Typology.

International audienc

Non-Native Differences in Prosodic-Construction Use

Many language learners never acquire truly native-sounding prosody. Previous work has suggested that this involves skill deficits in the dialog-related uses of prosody, and may be attributable to weaknesses with specific prosodic constructions. Using semi-automated methods, we identified 32 of the most common prosodic constructions in English dialog. Examining 90 minutes of six advanced native-Spanish learners conversing in English, there were differences, notably regarding swift turn-taking, alignment, and empathy, but overall their uses of prosodic constructions were largely similar to those of native speakers