Annotation Pro. Enhancing analyses of linguistic and paralinguistic features in speech

Annotation Pro - a description of techniques, methods implemented in the tool, as well as the list of all built in functionalities and features of the user interface, and usage tips

Paralingua – A New Speech Corpus for the Studies of Paralinguistic Features

AbstractThis paper introduces “Paralingua” - a new speech corpus created within a larger ongoing project whose primary aim was to develop a speaker recognition and identification system for forensics. The present corpus was designed for the purpose of analysis of selected paralinguistic features in continuous speech and for preliminary examination of the vocal display of affective states. The recorded (and annotated) data include conversational speech in the form of task-oriented dialogues, emotional utterances (realized as emotion portrayals), and an acted court scene. As a reference material, a short read text was provided by each of the speakers

Corpora of Disordered Speech in the Light of the GDPR : Two Use Cases from the DELAD Initiative

Peer reviewe

Aspects of gestural alignment in task-oriented dialogues

Aspects of gestural alignment in task-oriented dialogues Interlocutors in a conversation influence each other in a number of dimensions. This process may lead to observable changes in their communicative behaviour. The directions and profiles of these changes are often correlated with the quality of interaction and may predict its success. In the present study, the gestural component of communication is scrutinised for changes that may reflect the process of alignment. Two types of task-oriented dialogues between teenagers are recorded and annotated for gestures and their features. We hypothesize that the dialogue task type (collaborative vs. competitive), as well as certain culture-specific properties of alignment that differ between German and Polish pairs, may significantly influence the process of communication. In order to explore the data and detect tendencies in gestural behaviour, automatised annotation mining and statistical exploration have been used, including a moving frame approach aimed at the investigation of co-occurring strokes as well as re-occurring strokes and their features. Significant differences between German and Polish speakers, as well as between the two dialogue types, have been found in the number of gestures, stroke duration and amplitude.   Aspekty wzajemnego dopasowania gestykulacji w dialogach zadaniowych Uczestnicy konwersacji wpływają na siebie wzajemnie w wielu różnych wymiarach. Proces ten może prowadzić do obserwowalnych zmian w ich zachowaniach komunikacyjnych. Kierunek i charakter tych zmian często wiążą się z jakością interakcji i mogą pozwolić przewidzieć jej sukces. Celem niniejszego badania jest eksploracja gestowego składnika komunikacji pod kątem zjawisk, które mogą odzwierciedlać zjawisko wzajemnego dopasowania uczestników. Zarejestrowano dwa typy dialogów zadaniowych z udziałem nastolatków. Nagrania anotowano pod kątem gestów i ich cech. W badaniu postawiono hipotezę, iż typ zadania dialogowego (ukierunkowane na współpracę vs. na konkurencję), jak również pewne specyficzne cechy kulturowe dopasowania komunikacyjnego, które różnicują polskie i niemieckie pary rozmówców, mogą oddziaływać na proces komunikacji. W celu eksploracji danych oraz wykrycia tendencji cechujących zachowania gestowe, wykorzystano zautomatyzowane metody analizy anotacji oraz techniki statystyczne. Uwzględniono podejście oparte na ruchomych oknach czasowych, umożliwiające analizę współwystępowania jak i powtarzania gestów właściwych i ich właściwości. Wykazano istotne różnice między rozmówcami polskimi i niemieckimi oraz między typami zadań dialogowych w zakresie liczby gestów, czasu trwania oraz amplitudy gestu właściwego

The latest development of the DELAD project for sharing corpora of speech disorders

Corpora of speech of individuals with communication disorders (CSD) are invaluable resources for education and research, but they are costly and hard to build and difficult to share for various reasons. DELAD, which means 'shared' in Swedish, is a project initiated by Professors Nicole Muller and Martin Ball in 2015 that aims to address this issue by establishing a platform for researchers to share datasets of speech disorders with interested audiences. To date four workshops have been held, where selected participants, covering various expertise including researchers in clinical phonetics and linguistics, speech and language therapy, infrastructure specialists, and ethics and legal specialists, participated to discuss relevant issues in setting up such an archive. Positive and steady progress has been made since 2015, including refurbishing the DELAD website (http://delad.net/) with information and application forms for researchers to join and share their datasets and linking with the CLARIN K-Centre for Atypical Communication Expertise (https://ace.ruhosting.nl/) where CSD can be hosted and accessed through the CLARIN B-Centres, The Language Archive (https://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/) and TalkBank (https://talkbank.org/). The latest workshop, which was funded by CLARIN (Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure) was held as an online event in January 2021 on topics including Data Protection Impact Assessments, reviewing changes in ethics perspectives in academia on sharing CSD, and voice conversion as a mean to pseudonomise speech. This paper reports the latest progress of DELAD and discusses the directions for further advance of the initiative, with information on how researchers can contribute to the repository.Peer reviewe

Automatic Syllabification of Polish

International audienceThis paper presents an approach to automatic detection of syllable boundaries for Polish speech based on a phonetized text input. First, we discuss selected issues of syllable structure in Polish with a special focus on the needs of rule-based automatic insertion of syllable boundaries. We summarize and verify an existing rule-set for Polish, which is subsequently used as an input information for automatic syllabification with SPPAS, a freely available multiplatform software tool. Then, the applied syllabification methodology is described and illustrated with examples obtained with a Polish speech corpus. Finally, the paper provides information about the syllabification module for Polish that has been implemented as one of the latest extensions of SPPAS

Percepcja nienatywnych kategorii fonologicznych w mowie kierowanej do dorosłych i do dzieci. Badanie eksperymentalne

In the present study, we test whether adult listeners detect phonological contrasts faster and more accurately in non-native infant-directed speech (IDS) than in non-native adult-directed speech (ADS). 21 participants listened to pairs of speech signals and their task was to decide as quickly as possible whether the signals constitute the same or different words. Each pair of signals contained target vowels or consonants representing a certain category of contrast that was phonologically relevant in a given language but not in Polish, i.e., the native language of the participants of the listening test. The signals were presented in a random order, and each pair occurred in the material twice. Although we demonstrated significant acoustic-phonetic differences between the utterances realized in the IDS and ADS speaking styles, the listeners in our study were not significantly more accurate or faster in the identification of contrasts in either IDS or ADS stimuli.W badaniu przedstawionym w artykule podjęto próbę ustalenia, czy dorośli słuchacze trafniej i szybciej rozpoznają niewystępujące w ich rodzimym języku kontrasty fonologiczne w mowie skierowanej do niemowląt niż w mowie skierowanej do dorosłych. Grupę badaną stanowiło 21 osób. Uczestnicy odsłuchiwali pary sygnałów, a ich zadanie polegało na możliwie szybkim zadecydowaniu, czy sygnały są tymi samymi czy różnymi słowami. Każda z par sygnałów obejmowała kontrast oparty na samogłosce lub spółgłosce i relewantny w języku źródłowym, lecz nie w polskim, tj. rodzimym języku badanych. Bodźce prezentowano w losowej kolejności, a każdy z nich występował w materiale dwukrotnie. Badanie nie wykazało istotnej różnicy między trafnością i szybkością reakcji uczestników na bodźce oparte na mowie skierowanej do niemowląt oraz skierowanej do dorosłych, mimo iż wykazano istotne różnice fonetyczno-akustyczne w nagranych wypowiedziach dla obu stylów wypowiedzi

Annotating paralinguistic features in quasi-spontaneous speech. Adding the “vision ” component?

In this presentation a planned future extension to an on-going project is to be discussed. The project is focused on identifying, describing and annotating paralinguistic features in quasi-spontaneous speech using audio data for speaker characterisation. The extension would rely on bringing the “vision ” component to the scope of analysis and including it into the present framework, i.e. including features obtained from video recordings. Paralinguistic or non-linguistic features might be categorised or grouped in multiple ways depending on the prospective application and even their definition (although long discussed) is still not quite clear (e.g. Crystal, 1966; Schötz, 2000). Different categorisations might be expected from linguists, phoneticians, speech technologists or engineers, and further differentiation may result from distinguishing various levels of analysis. In some cases, it appears sufficient and adequate to distinguish a limited number of inherently diversified categories, e.g. to treat all types of hesitation sounds just as one category (Fischer et al., 2000) without applying any detailed sub-categorisation. This type of approach was reported as successful for certain applications such as computer speech recognition based on read, dictation-style and formal speech (e.g. Demenko et al., 2012). However, for the needs of automatically recognising informal, interactive speech as well as for speaker characterisation, a more sophisticated approach is required. The acoustic, phonetic or perceptual correlates of paralinguistic features have been recognised to a different extent, as well as their multi-lateral interactions and influences (e.g. Geumann, 2001; Grawunder & Winter, 2010; Minematsu et al.

Annotation and annotation mining tools for analyzing speech prosody in the Polish-German Borderland database

International audienceIn this demo presentation, we discuss tools and techniques developed within Borderland: a project dedicated to the analysis of paralin-guistic phenomena in the conversations of Polish and German teenagers, entitled: Language of Boundaries and Boundaries of Language (see more at: http://borderland.amu.edu.pl/)