Parallel Speech Collection for Under-resourced Language Studies Using the Lig-Aikuma Mobile Device App

International audienceThis paper reports on our ongoing efforts to collect speech data in under-resourced or endangered languages of Africa. Data collection is carried out using an improved version of the Android application Aikuma developed by Steven Bird and colleagues 1. Features were added to the app in order to facilitate the collection of parallel speech data in line with the requirements of the French-German ANR/DFG BULB (Breaking the Unwritten Language Barrier) project. The resulting app, called Lig-Aikuma, runs on various mobile phones and tablets and proposes a range of different speech collection modes (recording, respeaking, translation and elicitation). Lig-Aikuma's improved features include a smart generation and handling of speaker metadata as well as respeaking and parallel audio data mapping. It was used for field data collections in Congo-Brazzaville resulting in a total of over 80 hours of speech. Design issues of the mobile app as well as the use of Lig-Aikuma during two recording campaigns, are further described in this paper

Collecte de parole pour l’étude des langues peu dotées ou en danger avec l’application mobile Lig-Aikuma

International audienceNous rapportons dans cet article les travaux en cours portant sur la collecte de langues africaines peu dotées ou en danger. Une collecte de données a été menée à l'aide d'une version modifiée de l'application Android AIKUMA, initialement développée par Steven Bird et coll. (Bird et al., 2014). Les modifications apportées suivent les spécifications du projet franco-allemand ANR/DFG BULB 1 pour faciliter la collecte sur le terrain de corpus de parole parallèles. L'application résultante, appelée LIG-AIKUMA, a été testée avec succès sur plusieurs smartphones et tablettes et propose plusieurs modes de fonctionnement (enregistrement de parole, respeaking de parole, traduction et élicitation). Entre autres fonctionnalités, LIG-AIKUMA permet la génération et la manipulation avancée de fichiers de métadonnées ainsi que la prise en compte d'informations d'alignement entre phrases prononcées parallèles dans les modes de respeaking et de traduction. L'application a été utilisée aux cours de campagnes de collecte sur le terrain, au Congo-Brazzaville, permettant l'acquisition de 80 heures de parole. La conception de l'application et l'illustration de son usage dans deux campagnes de collecte sont décrites plus en détail dans cet article

Vocal Registers Transitions Phenomena in trills used in Mongolian Long Song productions

Résumés longs et références publiés dans les actes du congrès.International audienceThis paper presents the results of a fiberoptical and acoustical analysis of "Mongolian Long song". Our goal is to quantify the vocal registers transition phenomena during the trills that occur during these Mongolian Long Song productions. The study includes: 1) videofiberoptic laryngeal data of the 61 ornaments of a song produced by a famous Mongolian singer, Narantuya, with quantitative analysis (distance between the left and right arytenoids); 2) an acoustical analysis of the fundamental frequency F0 and intensity I curves of the ornaments. The fiberoptic analysis showed two main laryngeal behaviour in producing ornamentations, with a leitmotiv: 1) "lyrical" vibratos mobilizing the entire laryngeal block; 2) "Mongolian" trills with essentially supraglottic movements, the left arytenoid being mobilized independently of the rest of the laryngeal block. The acoustic analysis showed: 1) for the "lyrical" vibrato: F0 and I were in-phase, with a moderate extent ; 2) for the "Mongolian" trill: F0 and I were in opposite phase, with an important extent. Although we didn't have electroglottographic recordings to verify this, the acoustical indications of changes of laryngeal vibratory mechanisms are 1) frequency jump values situated between 2 and 7 semitones; 2) the time separating the two frequency jumps between 40 and 80ms; 3) according to Neumann et al. 2005, the amplitudes of H2 and H4 are smaller than those of H1 et H3 for the head register part in "a" trills; it's the opposite case for the chest register part in those ornaments.Cette étude présente les résultats d'une analyse vidéostroboscopique et acoustique du "Chant Long Mongol". Notre but est de quantifier les passages registraux durant les trilles qui se produisent dans cette technique vocale. Cette étude inclut: 1) des données vidéostroboscopiques du larynx de 61 ornement d'un chant produit par une chanteuse mongole célèbre, Narantuya, avec une analyse quantitative (distance entre les aryténoïdes droit et gauche); 2) une analyse acoustique des courbes de fréquence fondamentale FO et d'intensité I des ornements. L'analyse en vidéostroboscopie montre deux principaux comportements laryngés dans la production des ornementations, avec des données reproductibles: 1) les vibrati "lyriques" mobilisant le bloc laryngé entier; 2) les trilles "mongols" avec des mouvements essentiellement supraglottiques, l'aryténoïde gauche étant mobilisé indépendamment du reste du bloc laryngé. L'analyse acoustique a montré: 1) pour les vibrati "lyriques": une F0 et une I en phase, avec une étendue des modulations modérées; 2) pour le trille "mongol": F0 et I étaient en opposition de phase, avec une étendue importante. Bien que ne disposant pas d'enregistrements électroglottographiques pour vérifier cela, les indications acoustiques de changement de mécanismes vibratoires laryngés sont: 1) des valeurs de sauts de fréquence situés entre 2 et 7 demi-tons; 2) le temps séparant les deux sauts de fréquence est situé entre 40 et 80 ms; 3) en accord avec les résultats de Neuman et al. 2005, les amplitudes de H2 et H4 sont plus basses que celles de H1 et H3 pour les trilles produits en mécanisme 2 sur la voyelle "a"; c'est le cas inverse pour le mécanisme 1 dans ces ornements

LIG-AIKUMA: a Mobile App to Collect Parallel Speech for Under-Resourced Language Studies

International audienceThis paper reports on our ongoing efforts to collect speech data in under-resourced or endangered languages of Africa. Data collection is carried out using an improved version of the An-droid application (AIKUMA) developed by Steven Bird and colleagues [1]. Features were added to the app in order to facilitate the collection of parallel speech data in line with the requirements of the French-German ANR/DFG BULB (Breaking the Unwritten Language Barrier) project. The resulting app, called LIG-AIKUMA, runs on various mobile phones and tablets and proposes a range of different speech collection modes (recording , respeaking, translation and elicitation). It was used for field data collections in Congo-Brazzaville resulting in a total of over 80 hours of speech

Preliminary Experiments on Unsupervised Word Discovery in Mboshi

International audienceThe necessity to document thousands of endangered languages encourages the collaboration between linguists and computer scientists in order to provide the documentary linguistics community with the support of automatic processing tools. The French-German ANR-DFG project Breaking the Unwritten Language Barrier (BULB) aims at developing such tools for three mostly unwritten African languages of the Bantu family. For one of them, Mboshi, a language originating from the " Cu-vette " region of the Republic of Congo, we investigate unsuper-vised word discovery techniques from an unsegmented stream of phonemes. We compare different models and algorithms, both monolingual and bilingual, on a new corpus in Mboshi and French, and discuss various ways to represent the data with suitable granularity. An additional French-English corpus allows us to contrast the results obtained on Mboshi and to experiment with more data

Videofiberoptic laryngeal data and acoustic analysis of the ornamentations used in Mongolian Long Song

International audienceThe paper presents the results of a multiparametrical analysis of "Mongolian Long song", a long and slow versified melody with multiple ornamentations. The study includes: (1) a physiological analysis (videofiberoptic laryngeal data of the 61 ornamentations of a song produced by a famous Mongolian singer, Narantuya, and video recordings of the singer); (2) an acoustical analysis (fundamental frequency and intensity curves of the ornamentations). The fiberoptic analysis showed two main laryngeal behaviour in producing ornamentations, with a leitmotiv: (1) "lyrical" vibratos mobilizing the entire laryngeal block; (2) "Mongolian" trills with essentially supraglottic movements, the arytenoids being mobilized independently of the rest of the laryngeal block. These movements contrasted with the absence of cervico-scapular movement of the singer. The acoustic analysis showed: (1) for the "lyrical" vibrato: the fundamental frequency and the intensity were in-phase, with a moderate amplitude (1 to 3 semitones for the fundamental frequency, 4 to 6 dB for the intensity; 5 to 6 modulations/s); (2) for the "Mongolian" trill: the fundamental frequency and the intensity were in opposite phase, with an important amplitude (3.5 to 4.5 semitones for the fundamental frequency, 6 to 10 dB for the intensity; and 6 to 7 modulations/s) and acoustical indications of changes of laryngeal vibratory mechanisms. So in this multiparametrical study of Mongolian Long song with previously unpublished physiological data, we defined two ornamentations used by the singer in the same melody, corresponding to different laryngeal movements and different acoustic characteristics: "lyrical" vibrato and "Mongolian arytenoidian" trill

Images and imagination : automated analysis of priming effects related to autism spectrum disorder and developmental language disorder

Different aspects of language processing have been shown to be sensitive to priming but the findings of studies examining priming effects in adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) have been inconclusive. We present a study analysing visual and implicit semantic priming in adolescents with ASD and DLD. Based on a dataset of fictional and script-like narratives, we evaluate how often and how extensively, content of two different priming sources is used by the participants. The first priming source was visual, consisting of images shown to the participants to assist them with their storytelling. The second priming source originated from commonsense knowledge, using crowdsourced data containing prototypical script elements. Our results show that individuals with ASD are less sensitive to both types of priming, but show typical usage of primed cues when they use them at all. In contrast, children with DLD show mostly average priming sensitivity, but exhibit an over-proportional use of the priming cues

Innovative technologies for under-resourced language documentation: The BULB Project

International audienceThe project Breaking the Unwritten Language Barrier (BULB), which brings together linguists and computer scientists, aims at supporting linguists in documenting unwritten languages. In order to achieve this we will develop tools tailored to the needs of documentary linguists by building upon technology and expertise from the area of natural language processing, most prominently automatic speech recognition and machine translation. As a development and test bed for this we have chosen three less-resourced African languages from the Bantu family: Basaa, Myene and Embosi. Work within the project is divided into three main steps: 1) Collection of a large corpus of speech (100h per language) at a reasonable cost. After initial recording, the data is re-spoken by a reference speaker to enhance the signal quality and orally translated into French. 2) Automatic transcription of the Bantu languages at phoneme level and the French translation at word level. The recognized Bantu phonemes and French words will then be automatically aligned. 3) Tool development. In close cooperation and discussion with the linguists, the speech and language technologists will design and implement tools that will support the linguists in their work, taking into account the linguists' needs and technology's capabilities. The data collection has begun for the three languages. For this we use standard mobile devices and a dedicated software—LIG-AIKUMA, which proposes a range of different speech collection modes (recording, respeaking, translation and elicitation). LIG-AIKUMA 's improved features include a smart generation and handling of speaker metadata as well as respeaking and parallel audio data mapping

Innovative technologies for under-resourced language documentation: The BULB Project

International audienceThe project Breaking the Unwritten Language Barrier (BULB), which brings together linguists and computer scientists, aims at supporting linguists in documenting unwritten languages. In order to achieve this we will develop tools tailored to the needs of documentary linguists by building upon technology and expertise from the area of natural language processing, most prominently automatic speech recognition and machine translation. As a development and test bed for this we have chosen three less-resourced African languages from the Bantu family: Basaa, Myene and Embosi. Work within the project is divided into three main steps: 1) Collection of a large corpus of speech (100h per language) at a reasonable cost. After initial recording, the data is re-spoken by a reference speaker to enhance the signal quality and orally translated into French. 2) Automatic transcription of the Bantu languages at phoneme level and the French translation at word level. The recognized Bantu phonemes and French words will then be automatically aligned. 3) Tool development. In close cooperation and discussion with the linguists, the speech and language technologists will design and implement tools that will support the linguists in their work, taking into account the linguists' needs and technology's capabilities. The data collection has begun for the three languages. For this we use standard mobile devices and a dedicated software—LIG-AIKUMA, which proposes a range of different speech collection modes (recording, respeaking, translation and elicitation). LIG-AIKUMA 's improved features include a smart generation and handling of speaker metadata as well as respeaking and parallel audio data mapping