369 research outputs found
Annotation graphs as a framework for multidimensional linguistic data analysis
In recent work we have presented a formal framework for linguistic annotation
based on labeled acyclic digraphs. These `annotation graphs' offer a simple yet
powerful method for representing complex annotation structures incorporating
hierarchy and overlap. Here, we motivate and illustrate our approach using
discourse-level annotations of text and speech data drawn from the CALLHOME,
COCONUT, MUC-7, DAMSL and TRAINS annotation schemes. With the help of domain
specialists, we have constructed a hybrid multi-level annotation for a fragment
of the Boston University Radio Speech Corpus which includes the following
levels: segment, word, breath, ToBI, Tilt, Treebank, coreference and named
entity. We show how annotation graphs can represent hybrid multi-level
structures which derive from a diverse set of file formats. We also show how
the approach facilitates substantive comparison of multiple annotations of a
single signal based on different theoretical models. The discussion shows how
annotation graphs open the door to wide-ranging integration of tools, formats
and corpora.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, Towards Standards and Tools for Discourse
Tagging, Proceedings of the Workshop. pp. 1-10. Association for Computational
Linguistic
A Formal Framework for Linguistic Annotation
`Linguistic annotation' covers any descriptive or analytic notations applied
to raw language data. The basic data may be in the form of time functions --
audio, video and/or physiological recordings -- or it may be textual. The added
notations may include transcriptions of all sorts (from phonetic features to
discourse structures), part-of-speech and sense tagging, syntactic analysis,
`named entity' identification, co-reference annotation, and so on. While there
are several ongoing efforts to provide formats and tools for such annotations
and to publish annotated linguistic databases, the lack of widely accepted
standards is becoming a critical problem. Proposed standards, to the extent
they exist, have focussed on file formats. This paper focuses instead on the
logical structure of linguistic annotations. We survey a wide variety of
existing annotation formats and demonstrate a common conceptual core, the
annotation graph. This provides a formal framework for constructing,
maintaining and searching linguistic annotations, while remaining consistent
with many alternative data structures and file formats.Comment: 49 page
Introduction to the special issue on annotated corpora
International audienceLes corpus annoteĢs sont toujours plus cruciaux, aussi bien pour la recherche scien- tifique en linguistique que le traitement automatique des langues. Ce numeĢro speĢcial passe brieĢvement en revue lāeĢvolution du domaine et souligne les deĢfis aĢ relever en restant dans le cadre actuel dāannotations utilisant des cateĢgories analytiques, ainsi que ceux remettant en question le cadre lui-meĢme. Il preĢsente trois articles, lāun concernant lāeĢvaluation de la qualiteĢ dāannotation, et deux concernant des corpus arboreĢs du francĢ§ais, lāun traitant du plus ancien projet de corpus arboreĢ du francĢ§ais, le French Treebank, le second concernant la conversion de corpus francĢ§ais dans le scheĢma interlingue des Universal Dependencies, offrant ainsi une illustration de lāhistoire du deĢveloppement des corpus arboreĢs.Annotated corpora are increasingly important for linguistic scholarship, science and technology. This special issue briefly surveys the development of the field and points to challenges within the current framework of annotation using analytical categories as well as challenges to the framework itself. It presents three articles, one concerning the evaluation of the quality of annotation, and two concerning French treebanks, one dealing with the oldest project for French, the French Treebank, the second concerning the conversion of French corpora into the cross-lingual framework of Universal Dependencies, thus offering an illustration of the history of treebank development worldwide
ATLAS: A flexible and extensible architecture for linguistic annotation
We describe a formal model for annotating linguistic artifacts, from which we
derive an application programming interface (API) to a suite of tools for
manipulating these annotations. The abstract logical model provides for a range
of storage formats and promotes the reuse of tools that interact through this
API. We focus first on ``Annotation Graphs,'' a graph model for annotations on
linear signals (such as text and speech) indexed by intervals, for which
efficient database storage and querying techniques are applicable. We note how
a wide range of existing annotated corpora can be mapped to this annotation
graph model. This model is then generalized to encompass a wider variety of
linguistic ``signals,'' including both naturally occuring phenomena (as
recorded in images, video, multi-modal interactions, etc.), as well as the
derived resources that are increasingly important to the engineering of natural
language processing systems (such as word lists, dictionaries, aligned
bilingual corpora, etc.). We conclude with a review of the current efforts
towards implementing key pieces of this architecture.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure
A New Acoustic-Based Pronunciation Distance Measure
We present an acoustic distance measure for comparing pronunciations, and apply the measure to assess foreign accent strength in American-English by comparing speech of non-native American-English speakers to a collection of native American-English speakers. An acoustic-only measure is valuable as it does not require the time-consuming and error-prone process of phonetically transcribing speech samples which is necessary for current edit distance-based approaches. We minimize speaker variability in the data set by employing speaker-based cepstral mean and variance normalization, and compute word-based acoustic distances using the dynamic time warping algorithm. Our results indicate a strong correlation of r = ā0.71 (p < 0.0001) between the acoustic distances and human judgments of native-likeness provided by more than 1,100 native American-English raters. Therefore, the convenient acoustic measure performs only slightly lower than the state-of-the-art transcription-based performance of r = ā0.77. We also report the results of several small experiments which show that the acoustic measure is not only sensitive to segmental differences, but also to intonational differences and durational differences. However, it is not immune to unwanted differences caused by using a different recording device
Integrating Voice Quality Cues in the Pitch Perception of Speech and Non-speech Utterances
Pitch perception plays a crucial role in speech processing. Since F0 is highly ambiguous and variable in the speech signal, effective pitch-range perception is important in perceiving the intended linguistic pitch targets. This study argues that the effectiveness of pitch-range perception can be achieved by taking advantage of other signal-internal information that co-varies with F0, such as voice quality cues. This study provides direct perceptual evidence that voice quality cues as an indicator of pitch ranges can effectively affect the pitch-height perception. A series of forced-choice pitch classification experiments with four spectral conditions were conducted to investigate the degree to which manipulating spectral slope affects pitch-height perception. Both non-speech and speech stimuli were investigated. The results suggest that the pitch classification function is significantly shifted under different spectral conditions. Listeners are likely to perceive a higher pitch when the spectrum has higher high-frequency energy (i.e., tenser phonation). The direction of the shift is consistent with the correlation between voice quality and pitch range. Moreover, cue integration is affected by the speech mode, where listeners are more sensitive to relative difference within an utterance when hearing speech stimuli. This study generally supports the hypothesis that voice quality is an important enhancement cue for pitch range
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