8.715, Qs: Syllabification, Speech Recognition

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-8-715. Tue May 13 1997. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 8.715, Qs: Syllabification, Speech Recognition

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1)
Date:  Fri, 09 May 1997 14:34:21 +0800
From:  Xu Peng <xupeng at sentosa.sas.ntu.ac.sg>
Subject:  Syllabification tools

2)
Date:  Fri, 09 May 1997 11:32 -0500 (EST)
From:  Rusty_Richards at wycliffe.org
Subject:  Automatic Speech Recognition

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Fri, 09 May 1997 14:34:21 +0800
From:  Xu Peng <xupeng at sentosa.sas.ntu.ac.sg>
Subject:  Syllabification tools

Does anybody know if there is any tool can syllabize people's
English names, e.g., William will be syllabized into wi-llia-m,
and David will be syllabized into da-vi-d. Thanks for your help
in advance.  -- Xu Peng

======================================================================
Miss Xu Peng                  email : xupeng at sentosa.sas.ntu.ac.sg
Parallel Processing Lab       Tel   : (65) 7996151
SAS                           Fax   : (65) 7926559
Nanyang Technological Univ.   Home  : Hall 11 Blk 53-4-1047
Singapore 639798              http://sentosa.sas.ntu.ac.sg:8000/~xupeng/
======================================================================


-------------------------------- Message 2 -------------------------------

Date:  Fri, 09 May 1997 11:32 -0500 (EST)
From:  Rusty_Richards at wycliffe.org
Subject:  Automatic Speech Recognition


     The following question comes to me (Rusty Richards) from Doug Peters,
     PhD, researcher in automatic speech recognition at NORTEL in Montreal,
     Canada:

     ------------------------------------------------------------------
     May 7, 1997

     Hi Rusty,

     My mail system is finally unstuck, and I will once again attempt to
     briefly describe the question that I had for you on Sunday:

     Automatic Speech Recognition systems need help.  Sure, the speaker
     that unconsciously trains herself to reduce speaking variability while
     addressing a computer can achieve high-ninety word recognition rates
     with a high quality microphone in a quiet room.  If the same speaker
     is talking to a friend, however, the performance of the recognition
     system in the same friendly environment will degrade considerably.
     And the problem is much worse over the phone.  We have tried
     baseform/surfaceform experiments, essentially permitting multiple
     pronunciations of each word.  Unfortunately, this has the effect of
     making _every_ word more likely, rather than selectively increasing
     the likelihood of the correct words.  Might you suggest any other
     information that we could bring to the problem to exploit current
     linguistic knowledge?

     Thanks,

     Doug
     ------------------------------------------------------------------

     Doug Peters can be reached by email at peters at nortel.ca. Any help
     would be appreciated. Please copy me with any reply.

     Thanks,

     Rusty Richards (rusty_richards at sil.org)

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