To learn a language successfully, one needs to incorporate terms which are used commonly by native speakers but cannot be found in dictionaries. Words like uh-huh, oops, ouch, and brrr, are some examples of these terms. These expressions, commonly categorized under such linguistic labels as interjections (Ameka, 1992), alternants (Poyatos, 2002), and response cries (Goffman,1981), are what Dr. Lynn Henrichsen (1993) and Rebecca Oyer (1999) termed Unorthodox Oral Expressions (UOEs). These utterances are considered unorthodox because many of them are not formal or standard English words. Because of that, “we do not consider them part of the productive system of English,” so English dictionaries and textbooks rarely include these words (Luthy, 1983, p.19). Also, they are used mostly in informal speech rather than in formal written English. Hence, non-native English learners usually don’t have the opportunity to learn these informal utterances in English classes (Chittaladakorn, 2011; Oyer, 1999).Though unorthodox, these expressions are important for English language learners (ELL) to learn so that they will be able to carry out more natural and native-like conversations and understand what these utterances mean when native speakers use them. Because UOEs are so under-taught and there are so few teaching UOEs, there is a great need for a UOE dictionary that includes not only pronunciation and meaning, but also the syntactic features and semantic and pragmatic functions of these expressions. This project includes the creation of an online UOE dictionary to fill that need in English language acquisition.

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To answer the question who spoke when, speaker diarization (SD) is a critical step for many speech applications in practice. The task of our project is building a MFCC-vector based speaker diarization system on top of a speaker verification system (SV), which is an existing Call-centers application to check the customer’s identity from a phone call. Our speaker diarization system uses 13-Dimensional MFCCs as Features, performs Voice Active Detection (VAD), segmentation, Linear Clustering and the Hierarchical Clustering based on GMM and the BIC score. By applying it, we decrease the Equal Error Rate (EER) of the SV from 18.1% in the baseline experiment to 3.26% on the general call-center conversations. To better analyze and evaluate the system, we also simulated a set of call-center data based on the public audio databases ICSI corpus. / För att svara på frågan vem som talade när är högtalardarisering (SD) ett kritiskt steg för många talapplikationer i praktiken. Uppdraget med vårt projekt är att bygga ett MFCC-vektorbaserat högtalar-diariseringssystem ovanpå ett högtalarverifieringssystem (SV), som är ett befintligt Call-center-program för att kontrollera kundens identitet från ett telefonsamtal. Vårt högtalarsystem använder 13-dimensionella MFCC: er som funktioner, utför Voice Active Detection (VAD), segmentering, linjär gruppering och hierarkisk gruppering baserat på GMM och BIC-poäng. Genom att tillämpa den minskar vi EER (Equal Error Rate) från 18,1 % i baslinjeexperimentet till 3,26 % för de allmänna samtalscentret. För att bättre analysera och utvärdera systemet simulerade vi också en uppsättning callcenter-data baserat på de offentliga ljuddatabaserna ICSI corpus.

Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006), the first major African-American woman science fiction writer and the only science-fiction author to win the MacArthur "genius" grant, died from an accidental fall in February 2006. She is remembered for her work, which clearly fits into the science-fiction tradition, with imagined near- and far-future technologies, telepathy, aliens, space travel, and time travel. Yet Butler's stories are not clichéd space operas featuring white men in spaceship battles. Whatever the near- or far-future setting, the challenging themes that form the substance of Butler's writing are always power, dominance, slavery, and the complexity of human relationships. Butler's best-known works include the Parable novels (Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents), in which the main character Lauren Olamina writes a series of verses that become a new religion in an imagined near-future dystopian version of the United States. This dissertation is a composition for SATB chorus, orchestra, and speaker based on these verses and on quotations from Butler herself describing how she became a writer and the genesis of the Parable series. The musical setting of these quotations highlights parallels between Butler's novels and her own life. In the accompanying paper I analyze my process of extrapolating selected themes from Butler's life and work. My intent is to demonstrate how these themes are interwoven into the musical setting at many levels, and to show how the particular quotations and themes I chose to set musically reveal Butler's insights about present-day human experience on a larger scale. / text

This dissertation focuses on person identification problems and proposes solutions to overcome those problems. First part is about fingerprint features extraction algorithm performance evaluation. Modifications to a known synthesis algorithm are proposed to make it fast and suitable for performance evaluation. Matching of deformed fingerprints is discussed in the second part of the work. New fingerprint matching algorithm that uses local structures and does not perform fingerprint alignment is proposed to match deformed fingerprints. The use of group delay features of linear prediction model for speaker recognition is proposed in the third part of the work. New similarity metric that uses group delay features is described. It is demonstrated that automatic speaker recognition system with proposed features and similarity metric outperforms traditional speaker identification systems . Multibiometrics using fingerprints and voice is addressed in the last part of the dissertation. / Penkiose disertacijos darbo dalyse nagrinėjamos žmogaus identifikavimo pagal pirštų atspaudus ir balsą problemos ir siūlomi jų sprendimai. Pirštų atspaudų požymių išskyrimo algoritmų kokybės įvertinimo problemą siūloma spręsti panaudojant sintezuotus pirštų atspaudus. Darbe siūlomos žinomo pirštų atpaudų sintezės algoritmo modifikacijos, kurios leidžia sukurti piršto atspaudo vaizdą su iš anksto nustatytomis charakteristikomis ir požymiais bei pagreitina sintezės procesą. Pirštų atspaudų požymių palyginimo problemos yra aptartos ir naujas palyginimo algoritmas yra siūlomas deformuotų pirštų palyginimui. Algoritmo kokybė yra įvertinta ant viešai prieinamų ir vidinių duomenų bazių. Naujas asmens identifikavimo pagal balsą metodas remiantis tiesinės prognozės modelio grupinės delsos požymiais ir tų požymių palyginimo metrika kokybės prasme lenkia tradicinius asmens identifikavimo pagal balsą metodus. Pirštų ir balso įrašų nepriklausomumas yra irodytas ir asmens atpažinimas pagal balsą ir pirštų atspaudus kartu yra pasiūlytas siekiant išspręsti bendras biometrinių sistemų problemas.

Disertacijoje nagrinėjamos dvi iki šiol netyrinėtos problemos: 1. Lietuvių kalbos garsų trukmių prognozavimo modelių kūrimas Iki šiol visi darbai, kuriuose yra nagrinėjamos lietuvių kalbos garsų trukmės, yra atlikti kalbininkų, tačiau šie tyrimai yra daugiau aprašomosios statistikos pobūdžio ir apsiriboja pavienių požymių įtakos garso trukmei analize. Šiame darbe, mašininio mokymo algoritmo pagalba, požymių įtaka garsų trukmei yra išmokstama iš duomenų ir užrašoma sprendimo medžio pavidalu. 2. Nuo kalbos nepriklausomų garsų trukmių prognozavimo modelių kūrimo metodas, naudojant didelės apimties daugelio, kalbėtojų automatiškai, anotuotą garsyną. Dėl skirtingų kalbėtojų tarties specifikos ir dėl automatinio anotavimo netikslumų, kuriant garsų trukmės modelius visame pasaulyje yra apsiribojama vieno kalbėtojo ekspertų anotuotais nedidelės apimties garsynais. Darbe pasiūlyti skirtingų kalbėtojų tarties ypatybių normalizavimo ir garsyno duomenų triukšmo atmetimo algoritmai leidžia garsų trukmių modelių kūrimui naudoti didelės apimties, daugelio kalbėtojų automatiškai anotuotus garsynus. Darbo metu atliktas audicinis tyrimas, kurio pagalba parodoma, kad šnekos signalą sudarančių garsų trukmės turi įtakos klausytojų/respondentų suvokiamam šnekos signalo natūralumui; kontekstinės informacijos panaudojimas garsų trukmių prognozavimo uždavinio sprendime yra svarbus faktorius įtakojantis sintezuotos šnekos natūralumą; natūralaus šnekos signalo atžvilgiu, geriausiai vertinamas yra... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Two heretofore unanalyzed aspects are addressed in this dissertation: 1. Building a model capable of predicting phone duration of Lithuanian. All existing investigations of phone durations of Lithuanian were performed by linguists. Usually these investigations are the kind of exploratory statistics and are limited to a single factor, affecting phone duration, analysis. Phone duration dependencies on contextual factors were estimated and written in explicit form (decision tree) in this work by means of machine learning method. 2. Construction of language independent method for creating phone duration models using very large, multi-speaker, automatically annotated speech corpus. Most of the researchers worldwide use speech corpus that are: relatively small scale, single speaker, manually annotated or at least validated by experts. Usually the referred reasons are: using multi-speaker speech corpora is inappropriate because different speakers have different pronunciation manners and speak in different speech rate; automatically annotated corpuses lack accuracy. The created method for phone duration modeling enables the use of such corpus. The main components of the created method are: the reduction of noisy data in speech corpus; normalization of speaker specific phone durations by using phone type clustering. The performed listening tests of synthesized speech, showed that: the perceived naturalness is affected by the underlying phones durations; The use of contextual... [to full text]

Despite a continuous development in computer sciences and related disciplines, speaker identification remains one of the most challenging tasks in forensic phonetics. The reason for this is the fact that our knowledge of how identity is reflected in the acoustic signal is still limited. The present study aims to contribute to the search of speaker-specific cues by examining spectral properties of the source signal. Specifically, it examines to what extent three short-term measures of spectral tilt, namely H1-H2, H1-A1 and H1-A3, can discriminate 16 Czech female speakers. It also addresses the influence of vowel quality, syllable status with respect to stress and position of stress group in the utterance on the values of these measures. The results show that these parameters do have some discriminative power, though the contribution of individual parameters differs. The study indicates that discrimination of speakers is the most successful in stressed syllables and argues that individual vowels could differ in their usefulness for speaker identification. The results of LDA based on these short- term measures of spectral tilt were complemented with long-term measures, namely alpha index, Kitzing index and Hammarberg index which quantify the slope of the LTAS. The present study suggests that...

Submitted by admin tede (tede@pucgoias.edu.br) on 2017-04-18T13:21:40Z No. of bitstreams: 1 RUZILEIDE EPIFANIO NOGUEIRA.pdf: 4341780 bytes, checksum: 7f2ff572d0b929f2b8935fec621b31eb (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-04-18T13:21:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 RUZILEIDE EPIFANIO NOGUEIRA.pdf: 4341780 bytes, checksum: 7f2ff572d0b929f2b8935fec621b31eb (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-04-12 / This paper aims to perform a study about the interfaces established between Passa- porte, Fernando Bonassi`s literary work, and cinema, as well as their correlation with the interlocutor. Just like a film camera, the images produced in this text, capture a specific field of view, not a spatial continuum, but fragments that record a limited portion of reality, chosen by the writer, which determines a particular form of reception of the text where interpretation establishes itself between effect, which is the time conditioned by literary work, and reception, the time set by the addressee, who is requested to actively participate in the composition of the meaning of the text. From the late nineteenth century the center of interest of figurative object in literature and film, shifted from external reality to imagination of the viewer and reader, making them part of artistic creation, as seen in literary work under examination. It will be carried out the study of textual significance, which refers to the establish- ment of meaning, dissimulated by language in fictional writing, that requires an in- stance of pleasure and distress, resulting from the significant promise of what literary work keeps concealed. It will also be subject of reflection, the study of metaphorical images, in particular their correlations with the non-places, which are spaces occu- pied by human groups, without identification or bonds of coexistence with them. The world of massification constitutes these spaces, typical of modern epoch, such as shopping malls, airports, doctors' offices, are found in this literary work, thus making them one of the hallmarks of its constructive model and giving it a special current connotation. / Este trabalho tem por objetivo realizar um estudo sobre as interfaces que se estabe- lecem entre Passaporte, obra literária de Fernando Bonassi, e o cinema e, também, suas correlações com o interlocutor. Tal qual uma câmera cinematográfica, as ima- gens elaboradas, neste texto, captam um campo de visão específico, não um conti- nuum espacial, mas fragmentos que registram uma porção limitada da realidade, eleita pelo escritor, o que determina uma forma particular de recepção do texto, ou seja, a interpretação instaura-se entre o efeito, que é o momento condicionado pela obra, e a recepção, que é o momento estabelecido pelo destinatário, que é solicitado a participar ativamente da constituição do sentido do texto. A partir do fim do século XIX, o centro de gravidade do objeto figurativizado, pela literatura e pelo cinema, se deslocou, da realidade externa para o imaginário do es- pectador e do leitor, tornando-os, efetivamente, participantes da criação artística, e isto está presente na obra em exame. Será levado a efeito, também, o estudo da significância textual, que se refere à ins- tauração do sentido que a linguagem dissimula na escrita ficcional, que pressupõe uma instância de prazer e angústia, resultante da promessa significativa daquilo que a obra literária oculta sob sua sombra. Será, ainda, objeto de reflexão o estudo das imagens metafóricas, especialmente as correlações destas com os não-lugares, que são espaços que grupos humanos ocupam, sem se identificar e sem estabelecer laços de convivência com eles. Esses espaços, constituídos pelo mundo massifica- do, são característicos da época contemporânea, como shoppings centers, aeropor- tos, consultórios médicos, que constituem a sobremodernidade e estão muito pre- sentes na obra em exame, constituindo uma das marcas de seu modelo construtivo, o que lhe dá uma conotação especial de atualidade.