This paper presents a set of mathematical and computational tools for manipulating and reasoning about regular languages and regular relations and argues that they provide a solid basis for computational phonology. It shows in detail how this framework applies to ordered sets of context-sensitive rewriting rules and also to grammars in Koskenniemi's two-level formalism. This analysis provides a common representation of phonological constraints that supports efficient generation and recognition by a single simple interpreter. 1.

This paper is a report on the application of finite-state methods to phonological and morphological analysis that has brought about spectacular progress in computational morphology over the last several years. We will review the fundamental theoretical work that underlies this progress and discuss its relevance for linguistics. The two central problems in morphology are word formation and morphological alternations.

this paper we present a finite-state model of phonology in which automata are the descriptions and tapes (or strings) are the objects being described. This provides the formal semantics for an autosegmental phonology without structure-changing rules. Logical operations on the phonological domain--such as conjunction, disjunction, and negation--make sense since the phonological domain consists of descriptions rather than objects. These operations as applied to automata are the straightforward operations of intersection, union, and complement. If the arrow in a rewrite rule is viewed as logical implication, then a phonological rule can also be represented as an automaton, albeit a less restrictive automaton than would be required for a lexical representation. The model is then compared with the transducer models for autosegmental phonology of Kay (1987), Kornai (1991), and Wiebe (1992). We conclude that the declarative approach to phonology presents an attractive way of extending finite-state techniques to autosegmental phonology while remaining within the confines of regular grammar

Feature logics form a class of specialized logics which have proven especially useful in classifying and constraining the linguistic objects known as feature structures. Linguistically, these structures have their origin in the work of the Prague school of linguistics, followed by the work of Chomsky and Halle in The Sound Pattern of English [16]. Feature structures have been reinvented several times by computer scientists: in the theory of data structures, where they are known as record structures, in artificial intelligence, where they are known as frame or slot-value structures, in the theory of data bases, where they are called "complex objects", and in computati

This thesis proposes a phonetic model of English intonation which is a system for linking the phonological and F 0 descriptions of an utterance. It is argued that such a model should take the form of a rigorously defined formal system which does not require any human intuition or expertise to operate. It is also argued that this model should be capable of both analysis (F 0 to phonology) and synthesis (phonology to F 0 ). Existing phonetic models are reviewed and it is shown that none meet the specification for the type of formal model required. A new phonetic model is presented that has three levels of description: the F 0 level, the intermediate level and the phonological level. The intermediate level uses the three basic elements of rise, fall and connection to model F 0 contours. A mathematical equation is specified for each of these elements so that a continuous F 0 contour can be created from a sequence of elements. The phonological system uses H and L to describe high and low pi...

In this paper, we describe a reversible letter-to-sound/sound-to-letter generation system based on an approach which com-bines a rule-based formalism with data-driven techniques. We adopt a probabilistic parsing strategy to provide a hierarchical lexical analysis of a word, including information such as mor-phology, stress, syllabification, phonemics and graphemics. Long-distance constraints are propagated by enforcing local constraints throughout the hierarchy. Our training and test-ing corpora are derived from the high-frequency portion of the Brown Corpus (10,000 words), augmented with markers indicating stress and word morphology. We evaluated our performance based on an unseen test set. The percentage of nonparsable words for letter-to-sound and sound-to-letter generation were 6 % and 5 % respectively. Of the remaining words our system achieved a word accuracy of 71.8~0 and a phoneme accuracy of 92.5 % for letter-to-sound generation, and a word accuracy of 55.8 % and letter accuracy of 89.4% for sound-to-letter generation. We also compared our hierar-chical approach with an alternative, single-layer approach to demonstrate how the hierarchy provides a parsimonious de-scription for English orthographic-phonological regularities, while simultaneously attaining competitive generation accu-racy.

1 Introduction This paper describes Heterogeneous Relation Graphs (HRG), a formalism for describing linguistic structures. HRG was developed for use in a speech synthesis system (Festival (Black et al., 1996-1999)), and its design reflects the specific needs of such a system 1 . However, in essence HRG can also be used to store any type of linguistic structure and we have found it useful for database annotation and other speech and language applications. Storing linguistic information in speech synthesis systems presents some particularly interesting problems that distinguish this from some other formalisms used in speech and language processing. Foremost of these is that the linguistic data processed in a synthesis system is linguistically heterogeneous. That is, rather than dealing with syntax or phonology independently, synthesizers can be involved in text analysis, syntactic analysis, morphology, phonology, phonetics, prosody, articulatory control and acoustics. It is highly des...

The English are a lazy lot, and will not speak a word as it should be spoken when they can slide through it. Why be bothered to say extraordinary when you can get away with strawdiny?... Many of the Oxford Cockneys are weaklings too languid or emasculated to speak their noble language with any vigor, but the majority are following a foolish fashion which had better be abandoned. Its ugliness alone should make it unpopular, but it has the additional effect of causing confusion. [Irish playwright St. John Ervine, quoted by H.L. Mencken (1948, p. 39)] 1.

Abstract not found

This paper links prosody to the information in the text and how it is processed by the speaker. It describes the operation and output of Loq, a text-to-speech implementation that includes a model of limited attention and working memory. Attentional limitations are key. Varying the attentional parameter in the simulations varies in turn what counts as given and new in a text, and therefore, the intonational contours with which it is uttered. Currently, the system produces prosody in three different styles: child-like, adult expressive, and knowledgeable. This prosody also exhibits differences within each style -- no two simulations are alike. The limited resource approach captures some of the stylistic and individual variety found in natural prosody. 1. INTRODUCTION Ask any lay person to imitate computer speech and you will be treated to an utterance delivered in melodic and rhythmic monotone, possibly accompanied by choppy articulation and a voice quality that is nasal and strained. ...