Richard Sproat

Multilingual Text-to-Speech Synthesis: The Bell Labs Approach is the first monograph-length description of the Bell Labs work on multilingual text-to-speech synthesis. Every important aspect of the system is described, including text analysis, segmental timing, intonation and synthesis. There is also a discussion of evaluation methodologies, as well as a chapter outlining some future areas of research. While the book focuses on the Bell Labs approach to the various problems of converting from text into speech, other approaches are discussed and compared. Thus, this book serves both the function of providing a single reference to an important strand of research in multilingual synthesis, while at the same time providing a source of information on current trends in the field. Chapters in this work were contributed by Richard Sproat, Jan van Santen, Bernd Möbius, Chilin Shih, Joseph Olive, Evelyne Tzoukermann, all of Bell Labs, and Kazuaki Maeda of the University of Pennsylvania.

The Bell Labs Approach

Multilingual Text-to-Speech Synthesis

Min Zhang

Kam-Fai Wong

Yuji Matsumoto

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Computer Processing of Oriental Languages, ICCPOL 2006, held in Singapore in December 2006, co-located with ISCSLP 2006, the 5th International Symposium on Chinese Spoken Language Processing. Coverage includes information retrieval, machine translation, word segmentation, abbreviation expansion, writing-system issues, semantics, and lexical resources.

21st International Conference, ICCPOL 2006, Singapore, December 17-19, 2006, Proceedings

Computer Processing of Oriental Languages. Beyond the Orient: The Research Challenges Ahead

Kyle Gorman

Weighted finite-state transducers (WFSTs) are commonly used by engineers and computational linguists for processing and generating speech and text. This book first provides a detailed introduction to this formalism. It then introduces Pynini, a Python library for compiling finite-state grammars and for combining, optimizing, applying, and searching finite-state transducers. This book illustrates this library's conventions and use with a series of case studies. These include the compilation and application of context-dependent rewrite rules, the construction of morphological analyzers and generators, and text generation and processing applications.

Finite-State Text Processing

A formal computational theory of writing systems relating to psycholinguistic results.

A Computational Theory of Writing Systems

John Newman

With Computer-formatted Translation, Glossary and Concordance

Old High German Reader

This book traces the history of language technology from writing - the first technology specifically designed for language - to digital speech and other contemporary language systems. The book describes the social impact of technological developments over five millennia, and addresses topics such as the ways in which literacy has influenced cognitive and scientific development; the social impact of modern speech technology; the influence of various printing technologies; the uses and limitations of machine translation; how far mass information access is a means for exploitation or enlightenment; the deciphering of ancient scripts; and technical aids for people with language disabilities. Richard Sproat writes in a clear, readable style, introducing linguistic and other scientific concepts as they are needed. His book offers fascinating reading for everyone interested in how language and technology have shaped and continue to shape our day-to-day lives.

Language, Technology, and Society

Martin Neef

Anneke Neijt

This volume grew out of the workshop Writing Language, held at the Max Planck Institute, Nijmegen. The papers represent several lines of research into the intricate relation between writing and spoken language: Theoretical and computational linguists discuss the models that explain why orthographies are the way they are and the constraints that hold between writing and speaking a language; researchers in special education deal with the question of how certain aspects of orthography can be learned; and psycholinguists discuss aspects of language processing affected by variation in orthographies.

The Relation of Writing to Spoken Language

Joseph Olive

Jan P.H. van Santen

Julia Hirschberg

For a machine to convert text into sounds that humans can understand as speech requires an enormous range of components, from abstract analysis of discourse structure to synthesis and modulation of the acoustic output. Work in the field is thus inherently interdisciplinary, involving linguistics, computer science, acoustics, and psychology. This collection of articles by leading researchers in each of the fields involved in text-to-speech synthesis provides a picture of recent work in laboratories throughout the world and of the problems and challenges that remain. By providing samples of synthesized speech as well as video demonstrations for several of the synthesizers discussed, the book will also allow the reader to judge what all the work adds up to -- that is, how good is the synthetic speech we can now produce? Topics covered include: Signal processing and source modeling Linguistic analysis Articulatory synthesis and visual speech Concatenative synthesis and automated segmentation Prosodic analysis of natural speech Synthesis of prosody Evaluation and perception Systems and applications.

Richard Sproat

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