Speech Grammar Research Articles

Linguistic variables of Comprehensibility, Accentedness and Fluency in L2 Spanish: Listener type and ability level differences

The aim of this study is to identify which linguistic variables are most strongly related to comprehensibility, accentedness and fluency in Spanish as L2, and how the results may also vary according to the type of listener (expert or non-expert) and to the speakers’ level of ability in these three dimensions. To this end, 40 native English speakers of Spanish orally described picture narratives that were subsequently rated by four groups of raters using 9-point Likert scales. The first two groups were composed of 109 novice and 42 expert raters assessing comprehensibility, accentedness and fluency. The last two groups consisted of 35 phoneticians and 35 linguistic raters responsible for analyzing and scoring a total of 14 speech measures (7 per group) targeting pronunciation, disfluencies, lexis, grammar and discourse. The results reveal that comprehensibility is associated with a wide range of elements, while accentedness is determined especially by segmentals, and fluency by speech rate. Additionally, the impact of linguistic parameters varies according to the speakers’ level of performance, and there are differences between novice and expert raters, with the former being more affected by pronunciation and the experts by lexis and grammar.

Chinese Learners’ Mistakes in the Acquisition of French: Case of Verb Tenses

<em>The mastery of grammatical categories is a very important aspect during the acquisition of foreign languages in general, and in particular contrastive linguistics. Verb tenses in French are important part of speech grammar. Non-Mastery of them may cause second language acquisition mistake and misunderstanding especially in French with the verb lexeme. Their confusion by Chinese learners leads to mistakes. This paper uses descriptive method to analyze Chinese learners’ mistake in French speaking and writing.</em>

Типология метакоммуникативных единиц русской спонтанной монологической речи

В статье предлагается функциональная типология метакоммуникативных вставок, встречающихся в русской устной спонтанной речи. Под метакоммуникацией понимается особый уровень общения, коммуникация по поводу коммуникации. Она связана с метаязыковым уровнем речи, переход к которому часто происходит в сложных условиях коммуникации, например, при определенной трудности построения речи, как бывает при продуцировании монолога. В связи с этим, источником материала для исследования послужили расшифрованные тексты из подкорпуса Звукового корпуса русского языка, создающегося на филологическом факультете СПбГУ. Этот подкорпус – Сбалансированная Аннотированная Текстотека (САТ) – содержит монологи носителей русского языка и иностранцев, построенные по четырем коммуникативным сценариям: чтение и пересказ текста, описание изображения и свободный рассказ. САТ является удобным интегрированным инструментом для изучения особенностей устной монологической речи. Предлагаемая типология включает две группы метакоммуникативных единиц, различающихся по направленности (направленные на сам текст и на слушающего), а также несколько видов метакоммуникации, разграничивающихся по функции (дискурсивная, корректирующая, эксплицирующая, оценивающая и поисковая). Создание всеохватной классификации прагматических речевых единиц, к которым относится, в частности, метакоммуникация, является одной из важных задач современного языкознания, стоящего перед необходимостью составления особой грамматики речи, которая отличается от широко описанной грамматики языка.

Lexical development

During first language acquisition (L1), children need to gather knowledge about the speech sounds and grammar of their mother tongue. Furthermore, communication skills require an adequate vocabulary. Individual profiles of vocabulary acquisition can vary considerably. However, actively using around 50words by the age of 24months is considered a milestone in first language acquisition. This is usually followed by the so-called vocabulary spurt, a rapid increase in lexical knowledge. This article provides an overview of the theories of lexical development and discusses how the acquisition of vocabulary may be explained. A selective literature search was conducted in PubMed and Scopus. Current textbooks were also considered. In order to acquire new words, a child has to identify what the new string of speech sounds refers to. The child has to construct a valid concept of the word and subsequently store both word and concept into long-term memory. Several theories have been put forward to explain lexicon organization, the acquisition of concepts and the mechanisms underlying the so-called fast mapping phenomenon in particular. All of these attempt to explain the phenomenon of lexicon acquisition in terms of a model scheme. In the context of the fast mapping mechanism, constraints and assumptions, cognitive, intentionalist and emergence-based theories are discussed. Knowledge of the different theories of vocabulary acquisition is mandatory to understand the construction of the tests used to assess vocabulary skills in clinical practice and to apply these appropriately.

Interactive tool for semi-automatic generation of a natural language grammar from a device descriptor

A method, system, and tool product for creating a grammar for a natural language dialog system from a device description is provided. The system can include a device descriptor for identifying configuration, interface, object, and attribute information of the device, a speech grammar for identifying one or more rules generated from the device descriptor that are supported by the device, a speech recognition system for invoking rules of the speech grammar, and a processor for facilitating interoperability and development of distributed applications and providing delineated coverage of the one or more rules in view of the device descriptor.

A Software Framework to Create 3D Browser-Based Speech Enabled Applications

The advances in automatic speech recognition have pushed the humancomputer interface researchers to adopt speech as one mean of input data. It is natural to humans, and complements very well other input interfaces. However, integrating an automatic speech recognizer into a complex system (such as a 3D visualization system or a Virtual Reality system) can be a difficult and time consuming task. In this paper we present our approach to the problem, a software framework requiring minimum additional coding from the application developer. The framework combines voice commands with existing interaction code, automating the task of creating a new speech grammar (to be used by the recognizer). A new listener component for the Xj3D was created, which makes transparent to the user the integration between the 3D browser and the recognizer. We believe this is a desirable feature for virtual reality system developers, and also to be used as a rapid prototyping tool when experimenting with speech technology.

Automatic speech grammar generation during conceptual modelling of virtual environments

Speech interfaces are becoming more and more popular as a means to interact with virtual environments but the development and integration of these interfaces is usually still ad hoc, especially the speech grammar creation of the speech interface is a process commonly performed by hand. In this paper, we introduce an approach to automatically generate a speech grammar which is generated using semantic information. The semantic information is represented through ontologies and gathered from the conceptual modelling phase of the virtual environment application. The utterances of the user will be resolved using queries onto these ontologies such that the meaning of the utterance can be resolved. For validation purposes we augmented a city park designer with our approach. Informal tests validate our approach, because they reveal that users mainly use words represented in the semantic data, and therefore also words which are incorporated in the automatically generated speech grammar.

Speech recognition system for database access through the use of data domain overloading of grammars

A method for voice data entry availability in a voice response system can include receiving speech input specifying data in an audio user interface to a data information system for processing data in a data store. The speech input can be received through an audio user interface to the data information system. Subsequently, speech-to-text conversion of the speech input can be performed using a speech recognition engine with reference to a corresponding speech grammar. In particular, the speech grammar can contain a data set of words relating to the data information system. Notably, the data store can contain a subset of the data set, the subset having words which can be processed by the data information system, the subset not having words which cannot be processed by the data information system. If the specified data is included in the speech grammar and if the specified data is in the data store, the speech data in the speech query can be processed. However, if the specified data is not in the data store, it can be reported that the specified data cannot be processed. Finally, if the specified data is not included in the speech grammar, an Out-Of-Grammar (OOG) condition can be reported. Additionally, the speech data in the speech query is not processed.

Pour une grammaire du discours : l'« ordre oratoire » face à la Praelectio, une occasion manquée

Alain Viala : For a speech grammar. The « oratory order » against the praelectio : a missed opportunity The « Français » still persists in treating the study of the language as a preliminary to the study of the texts (lot of grammar in primary school and Junior High School, lot of literature and no grammar in High School), especially by laying the emphasis on sentence's grammar. In reaction to its kicks, has appeared a text's grammar. But the language exists, in practice, as a speech, and is learned before school, and, more, the notion of « text » is problematical. The persistence of such an inadequate mechanism has historical reasons. In the middle of 18th Century, Batteux, by proposing to study the French authors aside of the Ancients, started a movement towards the « oratory order ». But the scholar institution didn't extend it, under the influence of the dominating model : the teaching of latin with a grammar of sentence — for a foreing language — and praelectio — for the literary texts. So there is an aggiornamento necessary and possible by the way of a "speech grammar"

Waterhouse on Newspaper Style

Acknowledgements Introduction Glossary for non-journalists Standfirst Adjectives Alliteration And now The asthmatic comma Captions Catchwords Cliches (standard) Clichess (trade) Compression Consequences Crossheads Dead letters Dots and dashes Dramatic events drama Facetiousness Free speech Grammar Great minds How say you? Hyphens Illiterals Imaginary rules The incredible blob inelegant variation The intro I say, I say Italic and bold Jargon journalese just-so stories Kneejerks Lists Little by little Metaphor and simile More haste Not only but also The numbers game Officialese Oh, really? Ooh la la Paragraphs The pay-off Person to person Polysyllables Possessions Puns and wordplay Quote unquote Ramboism Rank an file Says who? Screamers? Sexism Sex romps Stagger off Supernumeraries Tabloidese Tautology The tops The weather-vane What rot which is that? What is style?