Equipment & Technology

Computerized Speech Lab (CSL) 4300 from KayPentax

The lab has acquired the Computerized Speech Lab (CSL) 4300 from KayPentax, which provides capacity for both real-time and off-line speech signal acquisition and processing.

Speech Processing Software

The lab also has three computers/workstations equipped with Matlab, Praat and Snack speech processing software toolkits. These toolkits provide cutting edge techniques for prosodic feature analysis and processing.

Automated Prosody Analysis

The lab has developed and the director has patented an automated speech prosody analyzer. See details below in the patent information.

Patent Serial No. 9,947,322 This invention is a method of detecting prosody in human speech in terms of prominent syllables, tone units, and tonic syllable tone choices as defined by David Brazil’s framework for representing prosodic features in discourse. It automatically determines these communicative features from a raw audio wave file in steps: 1) determine the phones that make up the utterance, 2) group the phones into syllables, 3) identify the prominent syllables, 4) divide the utterance into tone units, 5) determine the tone (falling, rising, rising-falling, falling-rising, or neutral) of the tonic syllables (last prominent syllable in a tone unit), and 6) determine the pitch (low, mid, or high) of the tonic syllables. The invention develops a program, which can be used for language learners, teachers, linguists, electronic engineers, computer scientists, or anyone in speech communication, who wish to better operationalize the property of human speech into a machine. Employing a text-independent system, the current invention provides a unique model for salient features of prosody in spoken parameters and integrates the stress and pitch tone features relevant to improving the performance of automated speech systems.

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