Segmentation of speech into syllables is beneficial for many spoken language processing applications since it provides information about phonological and rhythmic aspects of speech. Traditional methods usually detect syllable nuclei using features such as energies in critical bands, linear predictive coding spectra, pitch, voicing, etc. Here, a novel system that uses auditory attention cues is ...

The intonational realization of utterances is generally characterized by regional as well inter- and intra-speaker variability in f0. Category boundaries thus remain “fuzzy” it non-trivial how the (continuous) acoustic space maps onto (discrete) pitch accent categories. We focus on three types rising-falling contours, which differ alignment L(ow) H(igh) tones with respect to stressed syllable. ...

Pronunciation in spontaneous Mandarin speech tends to be much more variable than in read speech. In current recognition systems, pronunciation dictionaries usually only contain one standard pronunciation for each word, so that the amount of variability that can be modelled is very limited. Most recent research work for modelling variations in spontaneous speech focuses on the lexicon level, whi...