D-scripts model is originally developed for description of affective (emotional) mass media texts and with extension also applies to emotional speech synthesis. In this model we distinguish units for “rational” inference (r-scripts) and units for “emotional” processing of meaning (d-scripts). Basing on a psycholinguistics study we demonstrate relations between classes of emotional utterances in...

In this paper, we compare two methods of building a concatenative speech synthesis system from the relatively small, “Blizzard Challenge” speech databases. In the first method we build a system directly from the Blizzard databases using the IBM Concatenetative Speech Synthesis System originally designed for very large speech databases. In the second method, a larger database is used to build th...

In this paper, we propose a speech-presence uncertainty estimation to improve the global soft decision-based speech enhancement technique by using the spectral gradient scheme. The conventional soft decision-based speech enhancement technique uses a fixed ratio (Q) of the a priori speech-presence and speech-absence probabilities to derive the speech-absence probability (SAP). However, we attemp...

Speech communication is embedded in many daily activities. In this paper we investigate the effect of biking on respiratory and speech parameters. Breathing and speech production were recorded in eleven subjects while speaking alone and while speaking and biking with different rates. Breathing frequency, speaking rate, speech and pause intervals, overall intensity and f0 were analyzed for the d...

This paper reports the results of a pilot phonetic study of whistled Moroccan Tamazight. Whistled speech is an ancient traditional and natural practice that consists in a phonetic emulation and transformation of the spoken signal into a simple melodic line made up of frequency and amplitude modulations of a whistled signal. It is primarily used for long distance communication. We recorded four ...

Substantial individual differences in speech perception emerge under adverse listening conditions, including when perceiving unfamiliar speech. In the present study, individual differences in word recognition for three varieties of unfamiliar speech—Spanish-accented English, Irish-accented English, and dysarthric speech—were investigated. We asked whether the ability to perceive these unfamilia...

This paper presents overview of an online audio indexing system, which creates a searchable index of speech content embedded in digitized audio files. This system is based on our recently proposed offline audio segmentation techniques. As the data arrives continuously, the system first finds boundaries of the acoustically homogenous segments. Next, each of these segments is classified as speech...

This paper introduces the architecture and interface of a serious game intended for pronunciation training and assessment for Spanish students of English as second language. Users will confront a challenge consisting in the pronunciation of a minimal-pair word battery. Android ASR and TTS tools will prove useful in discerning three different pronunciation proficiency levels, ranging from basic ...

The Java Audio Music-suite (J.A.M. for short) is a suite of applications that provides tools and audio processing utilities for musicians. It’s core functionality includes a means whereby musicians who are geographically dispersed can play music together. An additional utility determines the actual musical notes from a piece of music using Fourier Transform techniques. All of these functions ar...