Re: [gnuspeech-contact] Newbie requests mind-tuning

[D.R. Hill]

Hi Ken,

The important element that is missing from the gnuspeech suite of software 
is "Synthesizer", the GUI front end to tube.  The reason this is worth 
having in constructing the databases for a new language is that, with a 
new language, you need to know the articulatory postures related to the 
sounds as precisely as possible.  "Monet", which is perhaps more 
important, is fully working under Mac OS/X and would allow the dynamic 
composition rules for the postures to be developed.  The other thing not 
yet ported are the tools for creating dictionaries.  Dictionaries can, in 
principle, be produced using any editor.  However, the dictionary tools we 
used allowed each word to be heard, repeatedly modified and heard again 
because they were tied into the "real-time Monet" component.  It would be 
a lot more laborious to work using Monet, but it could be done.

So it may depend on just how different are the phonetic elements of Hopi 
compared to the phonetic elements already in the database.  I suspect 
there may be speech postures, and therefore sounds, that are in Hopi and 
have no equivalent in English.  Also, I would guess there are differences 
in the vowel qualities.

I am intrigued by the possibility of trying this, hence this very quick 
reply.  I will give it some more thought.  The missing elements I have 
mentioned above only need porting.  They were obviously all there under 
NeXTSTEP.  If you want a fast port of "Synthesizer", Steve Nygard would be 
the best person to persuade, but he is busy with other things now.  I'll 
try and get more familiarity with the phonetics/phonology of Hopi.

Then there is the question of intonation and rhythm.

These also need to be determined.  The intonation will cause the bigger 
problem, I think, because it was the one phonological component that was 
not generalised when we created the system.  However, Monet does allow 
intonation contours to be put in there by hand, for investigative 
purposes.  I have no idea what the state of knowledge on Hopi intonation 
might be.  It is not particularly good even for English, and there are 
competing theories out there.

For the English database, we did a complete study on both rhythm and 
intonation, and that work was used to pick the intonation model we used 
and understand rhythm enough to make a rhythm model.  These are noticably 
good aspects of the current English language system.  Your focus on your 
Hopi background and knowledge don't really mention the rhythm and 
intonation aspects.

I look forward to hearing your reaction to the above.

Very interesting project you have!

More later.

All good wishes.

david
---
David Hill, Prof. Emeritus, Computer Science  |  Imagination is more       |
U. Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada T2N 1N4       |  important than knowledge  |
address@hidden OR address@hidden   |         (Albert Einstein)  |
http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~hill             |  Kill your television      |

On Mon, 6 Jun 2005, Ken Beesley wrote:

> Mind-tuning:  Using gnuspeech now for a new language?
>
> I just discovered gnuspeech and am reading the available
> documentation.  I have a medium- to long-term goal
> of creating a text-to-speech system for the Hopi language.
> I had assumed that I would create a diphone or unit-
> selection voice using a framework like Festival/Festvox,
> but now I'm wondering if it might be possible or even
> desirable to use gnuspeech in some way.
>
> One problem in the audio recording of Hopi subjects (to
> build a database for a diphone or unit-selection voice) would
> be that few of them are acquainted with the orthography.
> One possibility would be to present the prompts as
> audio, perhaps generated by a program like gnuspeech.
> Of course, a gnuspeech voice for Hopi could be very interesting
> by itself.
>
> My background:  computational linguist, some background
> in phonetics/phonology/IPA, specialist in finite-state
> morphological analysis and generation.  Competence in
> Unicode, orthographies, input methods, XML.  Programming
> in Perl, Python, Java, C.  Using Mac Tibook running OS X 10.3.9.
> But I'm just getting into text-to-speech as a private interest.
>
>
> Hopi Language Background:
>
> 1.  There is a de facto standard or first-priority dialect now,
> "Third Mesa Hopi", as documented in the excellent
> "Hopi Dictionary/Hopìikwa Lavàytutuveni", 1997.
>
> 2.  The phonology and orthography are well defined.  I can map
> reliably from orthographical text to phoneme strings, including
> word stress and a falling-tone phonomenon, using a Python script;
> no auxiliary pronunciation dictionary is required.
>
> 3.  Phonetic details including allophonic variants, vowel lengths,
> and the realization of the falling-tone phonomenon are still to
> be investigated.  Rhythm and intonation still need to be
> investigated.
>
> Big Question:  Is the gnuspeech project currently at a state where I
> could reasonably use it to create a text-to-speech system for
> Hopi?   Or should I concentrate on Festival/Festvox?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ken
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> gnuspeech-contact mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnuspeech-contact