Speaker segmentation and clustering

This survey focuses on two challenging speech processing topics, namely: speaker segmentation and speaker clustering. Speaker segmentation aims at finding speaker change points in an audio stream, whereas speaker clustering aims at grouping speech segments based on speaker characteristics. Model-based, metric-based, and hybrid speaker segmentation algorithms are reviewed. Concerning speaker clustering, deterministic and probabilistic algorithms are examined. A comparative assessment of the reviewed algorithms is undertaken, the algorithm advantages and disadvantages are indicated, insight to the algorithms is offered, and deductions as well as recommendations are given. Rich transcription and movie analysis are candidate applications that benefit from combined speaker segmentation and clustering. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Automatisation of intonation modelling and its linguistic anchoring

This paper presents a fully machine-driven approach for intonation description and its linguistic interpretation. For this purpose,a new intonation model for bottom-up F0 contour analysis and synthesis is introduced, the CoPaSul model which is designed in the tradition of parametric, contour-based, and superpositional approaches. Intonation is represented by a superposition of global and local contour classes that are derived from F0 parameterisation. These classes were linguistically anchored with respect to information status by aligning them with a text which had been coarsely analysed for this purpose by means of NLP techniques. To test the adequacy of this data-driven interpretation a perception experiment was carried out, which confirmed 80% of the findings