foNETiks
A network newsletter
for the International Phonetic Association
and for the Phonetic Sciences
September 2000
Editors:
Linda Shockey, University of Reading, UK <[log in to unmask]>
Gerry Docherty, Newcastle University, UK <[log in to unmask]> Paul
Foulkes, Leeds University, UK <[log in to unmask]> Lisa Lim, National
University of Singapore <[log in to unmask]>
E-mail address:
[log in to unmask]
The foNETiks archive can be found on the WWW at:
http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists-f-j/fonetiks/
Visit the IPA web page at:
http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/ipa.html
**************************************
ANNOUNCEMENTS
(New ones marked **)
(date of first appearance follows)
**************************************
13 - 16 September 2000. The Third International Workshop on Text,
Speech and Dialogue (TSD 2000). Brno, Czech Republic.
[log in to unmask]; http://www.fi.muni.cz/tsd2000/ (12/99)
14 - 16 September, 2000. VIEW 2000: Variation Is EveryWhere.
University of Essex, Colchester, England.
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~patrickp/ (03/00)
18 - 20 September 2000. ASR2000 - International Workshop on Automatic
Speech Recognition: Challenges for the Next Millennium. Paris,
France. http://www-tlp.limsi.fr/asr2000 (04/00)
25 - 28 September 2000. SPECOM 2000 - International Workshop Speech
and Computer. St. Petersburg, Russia.
http://www.spiira.nw.ru/speech/specom00.html (04/00)
2 - 5 October 2000. Prosody 2000: speech recognition and synthesis
workshop. Krakow, Poland. http://ptfon.wmid.amu.edu.pl (01/00)
8 - 11 October 2000. Patterns of speech sounds in unscripted
communication: production - perception - phonology. Institute of
Phonetics and Digital Speech Processing, Kiel. [log in to unmask]
(04/00)
11 - 13 October 2000. Multi-lingual Speech Communication. Kyoto,
Japan. http://www.msc2000.atr.co.jp/MSC/ (04/00)
16 - 20 October 2000. ICSLP2000: 6th International Conference on
Spoken Language Processing. Beijing, China.
http://www.icslp2000.org (04/00)
** 6-10 November 2000. I MEETING ON SPEECH TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER,
Universidad de Sevilla and Universidad de Granada, Sevilla, SPAIN.
(9/00) (See below for further information) URL:
http://fing.us.es/TecnoHabla/index.html
9 - 12 November 2000. Meeting of the Language and Social Interaction
Division of the National Communication Association. Seattle, WA.
[log in to unmask];
http://www.natcom.org/convention/2000/call2000.html (12/99)
3 - 8 December2000. 140th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America
and NOISE-CON 2000. Newport Beach, California.
http://asa.aip.org/newport/newport.html;
http://users.aol.com/inceusa/nc00_inf.html (08/00)
4 - 7 December 2000. 8th Australian International Conference on
Speech Science and Technology. Canberra, Australia.
http://www.cs.adfa.edu.au/sst2000/ (04/00)
4 - 8 December 2000. 140th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of
America. Newport Beach, California.
http://asa.aip.org/meetings.html (04/00)
11 - 15 December 2000. Stress and Rhythm Workshop. Central Institute
of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad, India.
[log in to unmask]; www.cieflconf.homepage.com (06/00)
12 -14 December 2000. WAVEip: Workshop on the Analysis of Varieties of
English intonation and prosody. Victoria University of Wellington,
New Zealand. http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/WAVEip or email
[log in to unmask] (08/00)
** 12-15 December 2000. Web-Based Language Documentation and
Description Philadelphia USA.
http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/exploration/ (9/00)
11 - 13 January 2001. Holland Institute of Generative Linguistics,
Conference on Phonology (HILP5). [log in to unmask];
http://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/aktuelles/hilp5_aktuell.html (06/00)
** 2 - 3 April 2001. Workshop on Innovation in Speech Processing
(WISP2001), Stratford on Avon, UK. (see below for further
information) (9/00) http://www.sys.uea.ac.uk/wisp-2001/
5 - 7 April 2001. PTLC2001: The second meeting of the Phonetics
Teaching and Learning Conference. Royal Holloway College,
University of London. [log in to unmask]
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/johnm/ptlc.htm (08/00)
9 - 11 April 2001. ISCA Tutorial and Research Workshop. Hands-Free
Speech Communication. Kyoto Japan.
http://www.slt.atr.co.jp/hsc2001/ (08/00)
** 13 - 16 June 2001. 4th International Speech Motor Conference.
Nijmegen, Netherlands. http://www.nici.kun.nl/speechmotconf/ (9/00)
18 - 22 June 2001. ORAGE 2001: ORAlity and GEstuality.
Aix-en-Provence, France. [log in to unmask];
http://www.lpl.univ-aix.fr/~gevoix/ORAGE2001 (08/00)
18 - 22 June 2001. ISCA Tutorial and Research Workshop. 2001, A
Speaker Odyssey - The Speaker Recognition Workshop. The Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
http://www.odyssey.westhost.com/ (08/00)
3 - 7 September 2001. EUROSPEECH2001 - 7th European Conference on
Speech Communication and Technology. Aalborg, Denmark.
http://eurospeech2001.org (04/00)
3 - 5 October 2001. 2001 International Workshop on Multimedia Signal
Processing. Cannes, France. http://mmsp01.eurecom.fr/ (8/00)
**********
IPA NEWS
**********
Handbook of the International Phonetic Association
The new CUP web site addresses for the Handbook of the IPA are:
http://uk.cambridge.org/order/WebBook.asp?ISBN=0521652367
http://uk.cambridge.org/order/WebBook.asp?ISBN=0521637511
Handbook of the IPA: Sound recordings
The audio files to accompany the language Illustrations in Part 2 of
the Handbook of the IPA may be downloaded from the IPA Secretariat
web site at the University of Victoria:
http://web.uvic.ca/ling/ipa/handbook
The site consists of a large set of .WAV files organized into folders
according to language, a few text files containing revisions and
additions to some of the Illustrations, graphics files of IPA charts
for printing, and an explanation of the site. The language folders
may be downloaded individually or as a single "IPA Handbook" folder
whose size is approximately 93MB. The .WAV files in each language
folder are arranged according to the headings of each Illustration in
the book and are named according to the English gloss of each item.
Once downloaded, the files can be stored on individual computers and
accessed as a database for playback. In this format, it is necessary
to use the print version of the Handbook as a guide to the items in
the audio database.
***************************************
CONFERENCES, WORKSHOPS & MEETINGS
***************************************
UK Institute of Acoustics
WISP 2001: Workshop on Innovation in Speech Processing
WISP 2001 will bring together international experts in spoken language
processing with experts from other relevant disciplines in a forum
where new ideas can be discussed and evaluated.
The workshop will be held in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, over two
days on 2nd-3rd April 2001.
The meeting will focus on four main themes:
New paradigms for speech pattern processing
Speech production and perception
Spoken dialogue processing
Spoken language in multi-media
Each theme will be introduced in a plenary session by an invited
expert in the field, who will have ample time to present new ideas or
to review the state of the art. This will be followed by discussions
open to all participants and by selected contributed papers and
posters. Numbers will be limited to 100 to ensure the meeting has the
feeling of a workshop rather than a conference.
The Workshop will be held at the Victoria Hotel in Stratford-upon-Avon
(the birthplace of Shakespeare) and there will be a programme of
sightseeing events available.
For further details, including the procedure for paper submission,
please see
http://www.sys.uea.ac.uk/wisp-2001/
------------------------------------------------------------------- I
MEETING ON SPEECH TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
6-10 November 2000
Universidad de Sevilla and Universidad de Granada
Sevilla
SPAIN
The I MEETING ON SPEECH TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER will take
place at the University of Seville from Monday 6th to Friday 10th
November 2000.
Oral presentations, posters and demos are invited on any topic
concerned with the following related areas:
- Phonetics and Phonology
- Discourse Analysis
- Language Modelling
- Signal Processing and Analysis
- Speech Recognition
- Speech Processing
- Speaker Recognition
- Speech Synthesis
- Language Generation
- Dialogue Systems
- Signal Coding
- Resources, Assessment and Evaluation
- Applications
- Education
- Development
- Machine Translation
- Parsing
- Information Retrieval
- Others
An abstract of a maximum of 300 words must reach us by 1st October
2000.
UNIVERSITY OF SEVILLE
Teresa L. Soto
Dpto. Lengua Inglesa
Palos de la Frontera, s/n
41004 Sevilla
SPAIN
Tel: +34 954 551 588
Fax: +34 954 551 516
email: [log in to unmask]
UNIVERSITY OF GRANADA
Ramon Lopez-Cozar Delgado
Dpto. Electronica y Tecnologia de Computadores
Avda. Severo Ochoa, s/n
18071 Granada
SPAIN
Tel: +34 958 243 271
Fax: +34 958 243 230
email: [log in to unmask]
For further information..
URL: http://fing.us.es/TecnoHabla/index.html
**********************************
POSITIONS VACANT
**********************************
Aculab plc, UK
Aculab is a leading provider of components and systems for the
Computer Telephony industry. With branches throughout the world,
Aculab's R&D is based on the outskirts of Milton Keynes, UK. Both
Aculab and Milton Keynes are rapidly expanding, providing an exciting
and challenging environment. Our products include the Prosody (TM)
speech processing platform, running world-class multi-channel speech
recognition and synthesis algorithms.
We have several full-time permanent vacancies for Linguists and/or
Software Engineers to join our speech technology team and work on
text-to-speech synthesis.
The successful applicants will join an international
multi-disciplinary team which has already released several products
and is expanding into new areas of Speech Technology. Aculab offers a
stimulating environment, good remuneration and benefits, and a strong
commitment to Speech Technology R&D. Both teamwork and individual
initiative are encouraged, and there is ample opportunity for
discussion of ideas in a very open and co-operative atmosphere.
Current full-time permanent vacancies are as follows:
1 - Software Engineer
The ideal candidate will be fluent in C and C++ programming, familiar
with Windows and UNIX platforms, and will have several years' coding
experience in an industrial setting. Previous experience in Speech
Technology would be advantageous, particularly in the areas of signal
processing, multi-lingual systems, and rule-based NLP. Knowledge of
linguistics, phonetics and/or a foreign language would also be of
benefit. A good command of English is essential.
2 - Linguists
The ideal candidates will have a background in linguistics with an
emphasis on empirical or computational approaches, and some experience
of Speech Technology or Language Engineering applications. Native
proficiency in and a good knowledge of the linguistics or phonetics of
English, Italian or Brazilian Portuguese is essential, as is a good
command of English. Computer skills, industrial experience, and an
ability to turn theory into practice would be definite advantages.
Please write to or e-mail Alex Monaghan with a CV and covering letter
explaining why you feel you would be suitable for any of these jobs.
Final Date of Application: asap
Contact: Alex Monaghan <[log in to unmask]>
Address for Applications:
Aculab plc
Lakeside, Bramley Road
Milton Keynes
Buckinghamshire MK1 1PT
UK
******************************************
GRADUATE STUDENTSHIP OPPORTUNITIES
******************************************
The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics is offering a
scholarship for research leading toward a PhD in the field of
spoken-language comprehension.
The topic of the project is category formation in speech perception
and language learning. The research will involve perceptual
experiments and computational modeling. The successful candidate will
work with a research group presently conducting experiments in speech
perception and language comprehension in adults and infants.
Candidates should have native or near-native competence in Dutch or
German. Candidates with a background in cognitive psychology,
phonetics, computer science, or information engineering may receive
preference.
Contact: Roel Smits, PhD.
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Postbus 310
6500 AH Nijmegen
Netherlands
fax: +31 24 3521213
email: [log in to unmask]
phone: +31 24 3521374
-------------------------------------------------------
PhD Scholarships in 2001
Experimental phonetics/speech science/laboratory phonology.
Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science (MACCS)
MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
The Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science invites applications
from international students for PhD scholarships in Cognitive Science
to begin in 2001. Scholarships cover fees and a tax-free living
allowance of approximately $A17,000 per annum. Some of the
scholarships are targeted for students in the following research
areas:
- experimental phonetics
- laboratory phonology
- speech production modelling and speech physiology
- modelling speech production processes in relation to reading aloud
- speech perception and word recognition
- phonetics and phonological studies of endangered languages
- speech acoustics and speech processing
- prosody and intonation
- phonetic and phonological studies of communication disorders
Facilities
Ph.D. students in these areas would have access to the
extensive facilities of the Speech Hearing and Language
Research Centre (SHLRC) as well as to those of MACCS.
In addition to a sound treated recording studio and
many SUN, PC and Macintosh workshstations, these SHLRC
facilicities include:
- speech physiology equipment, including an EMA system
and electropalatographic and airflow/pressure equipment
- speech perception facilities, including equipment for carrying out
reaction time experiments
- a 4WD mobile speech & hearing recording studio for field research -
SHLRC's speech pathology and audiology clinics
MACCS and SHLRC are supported by three full-time technical
staff. PhD students are provided with their own PC
and some contributions towards national and international
conference expenses. PhD students can choose to participate
in various teaching programs at undergraduate and postgraduate
level including a B.Sc in Speech and Hearing Science,
an M.Sc in Speech & Language Processing, and a Clinical Masters
in Speech Pathology (to begin in 2001).
Academic staff
MACCS and SHLRC have over 30 members of academic staff;
those that carry out research in the targeted areas
include:
- Dr Roz Barker (Lecturer SHLRC) Speech disorders, speech
characteristics of profoundly deafened adults
- Professor Mary Beckman (1/2 time Professorial Fellow, MACCS).
Speech science, experimental phonetics, laboratory phonology,
prosody and intonation, speech production,
the role of the lexicon in adult phonological knowledge and
in phonological acquisition by children with phonological disorder.
- Dr Steve Cassidy (Lecturer, SHLRC) Speech database development,
automatic speech recognition, speech acoustics, child speech.
- Dr Felicity Cox (Part-time Lecturer, SHLRC) Sociophonetics and
acoustic phonetic studies of Australian English.
- Dr Linda Cupples (Lecturer, SHLRC) Sentence comprehension in adult
readers, literacy development in individuals with disability,
phonological awareness and reading awareness in children with Down
syndrome.
- Professor Max Coltheart. (Director, MACCS). Cognitive
processes of reading and spelling and acquired and developmental
disorders of these processes; computational modelling of language
processing.
- Associate Professor Jonathan Harrington (Director, SHLRC;
Dep.Director, MACCS). Experimental phonetics and laboratory phonology.
Speech production, speech acoustics, prosody and intonation,
Aboriginal languages, accents of English.
- Dr Robert Mannell (Lecturer, SHLRC). Speech perception,
psychoacoustics, speech synthesis and text-to-speech development
- Dr Lyndsey Nickels (ARC Queen Elizabeth II Fellow, MACCS). Aphasia,
especially disorders of spoken word production; computational
modelling of acquired language disorders; aphasia therapy.
- Dr Sallyanne Palethorpe (Research Fellow, MACCS). Clear speech,
speech physiology, child speech, the production of prosody, acoustic
studies of Australian English
- Dr Kathy Rastle (ARC Postdoctoral Research Fellow, MACCS).
Models of speech production especially in relation to reading aloud;
computational modelling of reading aloud.
- Dr Catherine Watson (Lecturer, SHLRC and Dept. of Electronics).
Speech processing, automatic speech generation, experimental studies
of accent change in English.
Eligibility and method of application
Please see:
http://www.maccs.mq.edu.au/~max/SRC/1.html
for further details. The closing dates for the
applications are 30th September 2000. If you intend
to apply for an international scholarship, please contact
Jonathan Harrington <[log in to unmask]> as soon
as possible giving a very brief outline of the proposed research
area.
Futher details of MACCS and SHLRC are given at:
http://www.maccs.mq.edu.au
and
http://www.shlrc.mq.edu.au
********************
NEW DATABASE
********************
European Language Resources Association
*** ELRA NEW RESOURCES ***
We are happy to announce a new resource available via ELRA:
ELRA-S0085 BABEL Bulgarian Database
The BABEL Database is a speech database that was produced
by a research consortium funded by the European Union
under the COPERNICUS programme (COPERNICUS Project
1304). The project began in March 1995 and was completed
in December 1998. The objective was to create a database of
languages of Central and Eastern Europe in parallel to the
EUROM1 databases produced by the SAM Project (funded by
the ESPRIT programme).
The BABEL consortium included six partners from Central
and Eastern Europe (who had the major responsibility of
planning and carrying out the recording and labelling) and six
from Western Europe (whose role was mainly to advise and in
some cases to act as host to BABEL researchers). The five
databases collected within the project concern the Bulgarian,
Estonian, Hungarian, Polish, and Romanian languages.
The Bulgarian database consists of the basic "common" set which is:
- Many Talker Set: 30 males, 30 females; each to read twice
the five blocks of numbers (each of which contains 10 numbers), 3
connected passages and one "filler" passage. - Few Talker Set: 5
males, 5 females, selected from the above group: each to read 5 times
the blocks of numbers, 15 connected passages and 2 "filler" passages,
and 5 repetitions of the lists of monosyllables. - Very Few Talker
Set: 1 male, 1 female, selected from Few Talker set: each to read
blocks of monosyllables in carrier sentences and five repetitions of
the context words.
And the extension part: semi-spontaneous answers to questions:
the answers were recorded by the 10 Few Talker Set speakers.
The other languages will be available soon.
For further information, please contact:
ELRA/ELDA Tel +33 01 43 13 33 33
55-57 rue Brillat-Savarin Fax +33 01 43 13 33 30
F-75013 Paris, France E-mail [log in to unmask]
or visit the online catalogue on our Web site:
http://www.icp.grenet.fr/ELRA/home.html
or http://www.elda.fr
****************************************************
Material for the October issue of foNETiks should reach
the editors by 28 September.
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