Expression in Speech: Analysis and Synthesis - Softcover

Tatham, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199208778 ISBN 13: 9780199208777

Publisher: Oxford University Press, U.S.A., 2006

Synopsis

This book is about the nature of expression in speech. It is a comprehensive exploration of how such expression is produced and understood, and of how the emotional content of spoken words may be analysed, modelled, tested, and synthesized. Listeners can interpret tone-of-voice, assess emotional pitch, and effortlessly detect the finest modulations of speaker attitude; yet these processes present almost intractable difficulties to the researchers seeking to identify and understand them. In seeking to explain the production and perception of emotive content Mark Tatham and Katherine Morton review the potential of biological and cognitive models. They examine how the features that make up the speech production and perception systems have been studied by biologists, psychologists, and linguists, and assess how far biological, behavioural, and linguistic models generate hypotheses that provide insights into the nature of expressive speech. The authors use recent techniques in speech synthesis and automatic speech recognition as a test bed for models of expression in speech. Acknowledging that such testing presupposes a comprehensive computational model of speech production, they put forward original proposals for its foundations and show how the relevant data structures may be modelled within its framework. This pioneering book will be of central interest to researchers in linguistics and in speech science, pathology, and technology. It will also be valuable for behavioural and cognitive scientists wanting to know more about this vital and elusive aspect of human behaviour.

About this title

Product Description

All human speech has expression. It is part of the 'humanness' of speech, and is a quality listeners expect to find. Without expression, speech sounds lifeless and artificial. Remove expression, and what's left is the bare bones of the intended message, but none of the feelings which surround the message. The purpose of this book is to present research examining expressive content in speech with a view to simulating expression in computer speech. Human beings communicate expressively with each other in conversation: now in the computer age there is a perceived need for machines to communicate expressively with humans in dialogue.

Review

Review from previous edition extremely useful as a guide to anyone working on the interface between emotion in speech and speech synthesis. Tatham and Morton offer a far- sighted perspective to this topic and make explicit many issues the developer of synthesis systems might not think about at all. In this sense the book is also a very good example of how the linguist and phonetician can make valuable contributions to speech technology, and that in the end the best results will be obtained if speech technologists and linguists/phoneticians work together. (Linguist List)

In sum, this volume updates the reader on the relevant theories and literature, analyzes the problems of this topic, and suggests a new way of looking at the problem. It is pedagogically written, with the important points highlighted and with leading questions. (The Phonetician)

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press, U.S.A.
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0199208778
• ISBN 13: 9780199208777
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 432