Realm Of Speech Research Articles

Review of techniques used in speech signal processing

This paper provides an in-depth examination of crucial signal processing methods essential for analyzing and interpreting various signals, particularly in the realm of speech. The reviewed techniques include the Fourier transform, Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs), Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), and waveform coding. The applications of these methods in speech signal processing are elucidated, highlighting their specific advantages and inherent limitations. The paper also explores challenges associated with signal processing, such as the impact of noise, equipment quality, and computational demands. Emphasizing the need to carefully choose the appropriate signal processing technique for a given task, the review underscores the importance of striking a balance between the strengths and weaknesses of each method to achieve effective signal enhancement and analysis.

Silencing Conversational Silences

Abstract This paper aims to extend the discussion of silencing beyond the realm of speech and to the domain of conversational silences—that is, silences that have communicative functions in our conversational exchanges. I argue that, insofar as we can use silences to communicate, we can also be prevented from doing things with these silences. Alongside a threefold taxonomy I show the different ways in which this can happen, utilizing and extending Maitra's (2009) account of silencing to illustrate the wrong happening in these cases. This discussion not only highlights a new domain of silencing that has, so far, been underexplored, but also uncovers just how deep linguistic injustices can run.

Film-mediated Body Expression and Personal Narrative: Oral Testimonies of Macedonian Women Facing Violence in the Greek Civil War

Traumatic experience goes far beyond the realm of speech. The body and the mind keep track of everything. But words struggle to describe what the subject has really experienced. The use of film as a documentary medium sometimes allows us to see how the reminiscences of a past that cannot be forgotten are expressed through the body. It transforms the camera into an object of mediation that makes it possible to approach areas of the unspeakable, to elaborate what has remained unresolved, and to give a primary form of representation to what has been frightening in individual and collective history. To speak with the body or through the body, to show a part of one’s history, and to make the scope of the violence suffered heard engages a certain form of listening where the act of testifying joins that of recognizing, of naming and also feeling what happened. For these Macedonian women victims of ethnocidal practices, the full recognition of their trauma often requires body expression, as the body is the primary site of the violence endured. And the role of the film record is to restore aspects of the violence while providing the means to study its present and past significance.

Neurophysiological Differences in Emotional Processing by Cochlear Implant Users, Extending Beyond the Realm of Speech

Cochlear implants (CIs) restore a sense of hearing in deaf individuals. However, they do not transmit the acoustic signal with sufficient fidelity, leading to difficulties in recognizing emotions in voice and in music. The study aimed to explore the neurophysiological bases of these limitations. Twenty-two adults (18 to 70 years old) with CIs and 22 age-matched controls with normal hearing participated. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in response to emotional bursts (happy, sad, or neutral) produced in each modality (voice or music) that were for the most part correctly identified behaviorally. Compared to controls, the N1 and P2 components were attenuated and prolonged in CI users. To a smaller degree, N1 and P2 were also attenuated and prolonged in music compared to voice, in both populations. The N1-P2 complex was emotion-dependent (e.g., reduced and prolonged response to sadness), but this was also true in both populations. In contrast, the later portion of the response, between 600 and 850 ms, differentiated happy and sad from neutral stimuli in normal hearing but not in CI listeners. The early portion of the ERP waveform reflected primarily the general reduction in sensory encoding by CI users (largely due to CI processing itself), whereas altered emotional processing (by CI users) could be found in the later portion of the ERP and extended beyond the realm of speech.

The Soul as Answer

This article attempts to rescue the biblical and theological concept of the “soul” from the metaphysical morass that has usually held it captive throughout the history of Christian theology. In order to do so, it returns to the Hebrew roots of the concept (nephesh) by means of the Psalms. Then it observes that Paul Gerhardt used the Psalms’ unusual language and their understanding of the soul as the basis for several of his hymns. The article concludes that the biblical concept of the soul refers to the constant human dependence on God’s gift of life from outside itself. The soul is the totality of each human being’s identity and history as the human being stands before God’s judgment. It is a realm of speech in which God eternally speaks to the human, and listens for the answer of faith.

Contradiction in E.K. Brathwaite’s The Arrivants: the Healing Rhythms of the Mother

Contradiction in Brathwaite’s The Arrivants (1973) refers both to the predicament of his African ancestors sold as slaves and to the subversive attitude which they developed as a result, in the hope of securing more freedom, especially in the realm of speech. Systematic contra-diction, however, is a doomed and frustrating approach, the root of the problem being intrinsic to language rather than circumstantial. Only rhythm, and not lexis, can ultimately resolve the legacy of the past and salvage the poet’s genuine voice.

Indecorous Dining, Indecorous Speech: Pindar's First Olympian and the Poetics of Consumption

In the opening lines of Book 18 of the Odyssey, the beggar Iros intrudes on the suitors' feast. With a few choice phrases, the poet characterizes the new arrival: he is notorious for his gastAEr and for his insatiable appetite for food and drink (2-3). Even before the beggar opens his mouth, Homer endows him with one further attribute, prefacing his first speech to Odysseus with the participle neikevn (9). As the term indicates, Iros is from the first marked as an abuser, one who frames and delivers invective. Within itself, this episode already features the combination of elements that I wish to explore: the coincidence between transgressions in the area of consumption and those in the realm of speech. More particularly, I want to suggest that composers in a variety of poetic genres were working within a social and linguistic paradigm that constructed intimate links between decorous dining and decorous speaking, and that saw breaches in the registers of eating and speech as joined and expressive of one another: what goes into the mouth and what comes out turn out to be very closely related. The larger ethical and other structures to which this particular poetic discourse belongs will be taken up at the paper's end. My chief text is Pindar's first Olympian, a song whose preoccupa- tion with eating and banqueting, both in the real and the mythical domains, is frequently noted (Slater 1977.200). Not only does Pindar imagine the performance of the ode within the context of the victory symposium hosted by Hieron at Syracuse (15-17), but much of the mythical portion of the song is concerned with what happened at a banquet prepared by Tantalus for the gods and with the hero's behavior on this and another sympotic occasion

Modeling the perception of sound

Characterizing the subjective effects of sound is similar to the problems of characterizing sound itself. Since both are functions of several variables, the values of each variable must be found to evaluate the significance of changes. The wave motion model of sound enables us to express the variability in the nature of sound as a function of its independent variables with great mathematical precision. Similar accuracy in measuring the perception of sound cannot be achieved without a model that expresses the variables of perception and their interrelationships. Methods for studying the variables of perception have been, and are being, developed. The application of these techniques to subjective judgments of sound is currently producing information about the variables of sound perception and their relation to the variables of sound itself in the realm of speech. From this information, a model for combining the variables to predict speech preference is being derived. These methods have not been applied to the problem of noise perception. However, if one considers annoyance as the opposite of preference, the techniques are directly applicable to the problem of characterizing the perception of noise.