Non-existing Words Research Articles

Issues in French text-to-speech synthesis

In this paper, the new French text-to-speech system being developed at AT&T is presented. The system, based on diphone and triphone concatenation, follows the general framework of the Bell Laboratories English TTS system [J. Olive (1977); J. Olive and M. Liberman (1979)]. Concatenative units have been recorded within real words from dictionary extraction and from logatomes, or nonexisting words. Researchers disagree as to whether to use logatomes or real words for synthesis. The argument for using logatomes is that it is better to collect neutral words so that the diphone is recorded as neutrally as possible and does not undergo any real word stress. Those against argue that the diphone is over-articulated in a logatome environment and that it reduces the naturalness of the synthesized speech. Experiments are shown that prove the strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches. Methods for automatic segmentation and for the choice of concatenative units are presented, as well as durational and prosodic issues. Directions for future improvement are described, including morphological analysis, part-of-speech tagging, and partial syntactic analysis. Some problems in French text-to-speech, such as nasalization, liaison, realization of schwas, lengthening of silences, prosodic groupings, as well as stable versus unstable phonemes are discussed.

Ghosts, Copulating Friends, and Pedestrian Locusts in Some Reviews of Eckmann's "Middle Turkic Glosses"

Early interlinear Qur'dn translations provide useful material for Middle Turkic and early classical Persian lexicography. Frequently, however, the real function of the glosses and their true relationship to the Arabic original have been misunderstood. As a result, non-existent words, or words or phrases with erroneous forms or meanings, were put into circulation. This article suggests a new approach to the semantic interpretation of the glosses. Emphasizing that etymological excursions or references to traditional lexicons alone do not suffice to verify the forms or meanings of rare or unusual lexical items, the article discusses twenty-five Turkic glosses from the Rylands interlinear Qur'dn translation.

The Art of Translation

Summary: Translation is important for effective international communication. Translation can help make scientific and technical material common among scientists from different nations. Although of its recognized importance a comparatively small amount of critical attention has been given to the art of translation, among which one can find many contradicting principles. The governing principle of translation is that the nature of the content, the purpose of translation, and the intended reader determine whether the translation will be literal, paraphrasical, idiomatic or partial. It is advisable to blend the four methods when necessary to achieve the prime goal of translation: conveying the original meanings through the language of rendition. Specific problems in translation are grouped under two main headings: lack of equivalence, and idiomatic problems. By "lack of equivalence" is meant two things: (1) unidentical meanings attached to two corresponding words, (2) nonexistent words in the language of rendition corresponding to words in the original language. Faced with these problems, the translator has to choose between three alternatives: (1) transliteration, (2) adaptation, or (3) the coining of new words. Technical terms of Greek and Latin origin and nonexistent in the language of rendition should be transliterated or adapted. Idiom was defined as all patterns of linguistic expressions peculiar to the language, and the style of the writer. Idioms can be classified according to their method of translation: literal, idiomatic, and paraphrasical. It is difficult to preserve the style of the author. However if the style is significant, the translator has to strive to preserve the style without obscuring the meaning. In technical and scientific translation the meaning is of greater importance than the style. Translation should always be done into one's own language. A good translator should be familiar with the cultural background of the original piece of work. He should have satisfactory knowledge of the foreign language, the scientific subject matter under translation, and he should possess a high degree of sympathy to be able to translate literary material. Ability to write his own language is a necessary qualification. Translating machines can be of help in translating scientific and technical material, but not in translating literary material. With the development of translating machines this limitation might be overcome.

Verbal Toys in the "Otic"

To the Editor:— Your word man ( JAMA 186 :138 [Oct 12] 1963), unable to find tuberculotic in the vocabulary of medicine in spite of what he refers to as the fact that where there is an '-osis' there must be an '-otic,' is too easily bemused. Among countless examples, the following nonexistent words spring readily to mind: endometriotic, adenomyotic, thyrotoxicotic, osteoporotic, avitaminotic, hemochromatotic, dermatotic, erythrocytotic furunculotic, dermatophytotic, pediculotic, berylliotic, halitotic, rickettsiotic, and bartonellotic. One might think that my favorite among the missing words would be pneumonultramicroscopicosilicovolcanoconiotic, but it isn't; it's reticuloendotheliotic. Can Dr. Gode think of any -otic words for which there is no -osis? Only two offhand: polyostotic, leprotic. Plus, of course, the rather obvious idiotic.