42 research outputs found

    Statistical parametric speech synthesis for Ibibio

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    Ibibio is a Nigerian tone language, spoken in the south-east coastal region of Nigeria. Like most African languages, it is resource-limited. This presents a major challenge to conventional approaches to speech synthesis, which typically require the training of numerous predictive models of linguistic features such as the phoneme sequence (i.e., a pronunciation dictionary plus a letter-to-sound model) and prosodic structure (e.g., a phrase break predictor). This training is invariably supervised, requiring a corpus of training data labelled with the linguistic feature to be predicted. In this paper, we investigate what can be achieved in the absence of many of these expensive resources, and also with a limited amount of speech recordings. We employ a statistical parametric method, because this has been found to oïŹ€er good performance even on small corpora, and because it is able to directly learn the relationship between acoustics and whatever linguistic features are available, potentially mitigating the absence of explicit representations of intermediate linguistic layers such as prosody. We present an evaluation that compares systems that have access to varying degrees of linguistic structure. The simplest system only uses phonetic context (quinphones), and this is compared to systems with access to a richer set of context features, with or without tone marking. It is found that the use of tone marking contributes signiïŹcantly to the quality of synthetic speech. Future work should therefore address the problem of tone assignment using a dictionary and the building of a prediction module for out-of-vocabulary words. Key words: speech synthesis, Ibibio, low-resource languages, HT

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

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    This paper presents a Text-to-Speech (TTS) synthesis system for YorĂșbĂ  language using the open-source Festival TTS engine. YorĂșbĂ  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, YorĂșbĂ , Syllabl

    Tone labelling algorithm for Sesotho

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    M.Sc., Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, 2011Studies have shown that text-to-speech systems need detailed prosodic models of a language in order to ideally sound natural to native speakers of the language. A text-to-speech system developed for Sesotho needs to have tone implemented in it since Sesotho is a tonal language which uses pitch variations to distinguish lexical and/or grammatical meaning. In order to implement tone for a language such as Sesotho, it is necessary for a tone modeling algorithm to receive as input the tone labels of the syllables of a word. This allows the algorithm to predict the appropriate intonation of the word. The aim of our study is to improve a basic tone labeling algorithm that predicts tone labels using three Sesotho tonal rules. The application of this algorithm is restricted to polysyllabic verb stems. The research study involves implementing an extended tone labeling algorithm that implements four additional Sesotho tonal rules and extends its application to all the other parts of speech. The results of our study show that the extended tone labeling algorithm significantly improves the basic algorithm by increasing the number of matched tone labels. Furthermore, our study provides the basic step to tone modeling for languages such as Sesotho which do not mark tone labels in orthography

    African linguistics on the prairie

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    African Linguistics on the Prairie features select revised peer-reviewed papers from the 45th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at the University of Kansas. The articles in this volume reflect the enormous diversity of African languages, as they focus on languages from all of the major African language phyla. The articles here also reflect the many different research perspectives that frame the work of linguists in the Association for Contemporary African Linguistics. The diversity of views presented in this volume are thus indicative of the vitality of current African linguistics research. The work presented in this volume represents both descriptive and theoretical methodologies and covers fields ranging from phonetics, phonology, morphology, typology, syntax, and semantics to sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, language acquisition, computational linguistics and beyond. This broad scope and the quality of the articles contained within holds out the promise of continued advancement in linguistic research on African languages

    West African Masking Traditions and Diaspora Masquerade Carnivals

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    Shared Governance in Public Universities in Uganda: Current Concerns and Directions for Reform

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    This article focuses on Makerere University and Kyambogo University to highlight stakeholders’ concerns pertaining to the shared governance framework for public universities in Uganda. It is anchored in the interpretivist lens and the data was derived from three state-sponsored reports on the two public universities. The secondary data was analysed using content analysis. The findings demonstrate that the size, composition, authority and effectiveness of the university council and the senate and the mode through which leaders assume office, are the salient governance concerns in the two universities. The results further show that, stakeholders’ concerns regarding the current shared governance framework for public universities relate to the substance of the framework rather than its form or the framework itself. This suggests that the governance framework comprising the university council, the university senate and the administration is fit for purpose and in sync with the nature of the academy. Arguably, these governance organs (and the nature of their work) set a university apart from other organisations. Finally, without being prescriptive, the article sketches options for reform

    Selected papers from the 45th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

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    African Linguistics on the Prairie features select revised peer-reviewed papers from the 45th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at the University of Kansas. The articles in this volume reflect the enormous diversity of African languages, as they focus on languages from all of the major African language phyla. The articles here also reflect the many different research perspectives that frame the work of linguists in the Association for Contemporary African Linguistics. The diversity of views presented in this volume are thus indicative of the vitality of current African linguistics research. The work presented in this volume represents both descriptive and theoretical methodologies and covers fields ranging from phonetics, phonology, morphology, typology, syntax, and semantics to sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, language acquisition, computational linguistics and beyond. This broad scope and the quality of the articles contained within holds out the promise of continued advancement in linguistic research on African languages

    Dynamics of learning among pre-primary school learners in Uyo Senatorial District, Nigeria: an exploration of formal and informal education processes.

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    Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.The concept ‘Early Childhood Education’ (ECE) or pre-primary education as it known in Nigeria is referred to as Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) in the Republic of China. It is also called Early Childhood Development in Tanzania and South Africa. In the United States of America, this phase of education is known as ECE. In spite of the many different names given to this level of education by different countries, this is the kind of education which children between the ages of three and five receive. Therefore, the focus of this study was to explore the dynamics that surround the way pre-primary school learners learn in formal and informal education settings. In specific terms, the purpose of this study was to provide an in-depth description on the forces that impact learning of young children between the ages of three and five both at school and home. By engaging in research into the learning among pre-primary school learners, I shed some light on the dynamics that impact ways in which children learn both at school and home. In the light of the above this study therefore seeks to achieve the following objectives: to examine the language pre-primary school learners adopt for learning; to examine the impact of language on pre-primary school learners’ learning; and to understand the dynamics that surround the way pre-primary school learners learn in formal and informal education settings. Based on the research objectives stated above, three key research questions were developed to guide the study. The questions are: what language do pre-primary school learners adopt for learning? How does language impact pre-primary school learners’ learning? What are the dynamics that surround the way pre-primary school learners learn in formal and informal education settings? Based on the nature of the study which bordered on the social phenomena, a qualitative approach was adopted. In line with this approach, an interpretive paradigm was adopted in order to make sense of and to have an in-depth understanding of the dynamics that surround ways in which pre-primary school learners learn in formal and informal education settings. Individual and focus group interviews were designed and administered to 15 teachers and 8 parents from three schools. The transcribed data was subjected to an open coding and the emerging themes were subjected to thematic analysis. From the findings, it was discovered that the language of the immediate community, the mother and English language were the languages used in the teaching of the children in formal and informal settings. In line with the second question, it was indicated that identification, presentation, discussion of objects, development of literacy skills, and promoting communication had a possible impact on language in pre-primary school learners’ learning. In addition, the dynamics that influenced ways children learned were through playing, imitation, story-telling and folktales, and drawing enhanced by children’s readiness to learn, children’s willingness to learn, children’s maturity, availability of instructional resources, and parents’/teachers’ attitude towards children . One of the recommendations was that children who come from ethnic group different from where the school is located, and who want to attend pre-primary school in area, should first and foremost, be subjected to six months training in the language of immediate community or mother tongue and that subjecting the children to six months language familiarisation will assist them to adjust immediately in the class as well as ensuring uniformity of language in the classroom
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