18.635, Calls: Applied Linguistics/USA; General Linguistics/Belgium

Wed Feb 28 17:08:42 UTC 2007

LINGUIST List: Vol-18-635. Wed Feb 28 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 18.635, Calls: Applied Linguistics/USA; General Linguistics/Belgium

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org>

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       <reviews at linguistlist.org> 

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1)
Date: 28-Feb-2007
From: Bethany Townsend < bethany at linguistlist.org >
Subject: 14th Annual Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium 

2)
Date: 27-Feb-2007
From: Helmer Strik < strik at let.ru.nl >
Subject: Structure-Based and Template-Based ASR 

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 12:03:30
From: Bethany Townsend < bethany at linguistlist.org >
Subject: 14th Annual Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium 

Full Title: 14th Annual Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium 
Short Title: SILS 14 

Date: 01-Jun-2007 - 03-Jun-2007
Location: Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, USA 
Contact Person: Margaret Noori
Meeting Email: mnoori at umich.edu
Web Site: http://linguistlist.org/sils/index.html 

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Language Description 

Call Deadline: 14-Mar-2007 

Meeting Description:

This year at the 14th annual SILS (Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium)
language instructors, technology experts and linguists will gather again to
share the work, and the dreams, of language communities all over the world. The
theme is 'Working Together We Can Bring Back the Language: How Technology Can
Make it Happen.' 

SILS 14 is hosted by the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal Nation, Eastern Michigan
University, and the LINGUIST List at the Soaring Eagle Casino & Resort in Mt.
Pleasant, Michigan.

Particularly invited are presentations describing projects related to using
technology in language documentation and preservation, self-documentation of
endangered languages, innovative educational ideas, and proficiency outcomes. 
Presentations can take the following formats: 20 minute papers (plus question
period), 15 minute demonstrations of technologies used to preserve and stabilize
languages, poster presentations summarizing projects, and 1 hour workshops on
successful methods of language preservation that can be adapted by a wide number
of language groups.

Suggested topics for talks, demos, and workshops include: web-based methods of
preservation, instruction, and collaboration, options for distance learning,
linguistic and cultural preservation, methods of successful instruction,
revising languages without speakers, repatriation of language texts and
recordings, and multi-generational community-based language initiatives.

Further information is available at:
http://linguistlist.org/sils/index.html
Telephone: (734) 487-0144 Fax: (734) 482-0132

-------------------------Message 2 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 12:03:35
From: Helmer Strik < strik at let.ru.nl >
Subject: Structure-Based and Template-Based ASR 

Full Title: Structure-Based and Template-Based ASR 
Short Title: STB-ASR 

Date: 28-Aug-2007 - 31-Aug-2007
Location: Antwerp, Belgium 
Contact Person: Helmer Strik
Meeting Email: strik at let.ru.nl
Web Site: http://lands.let.ru.nl/~strik/IS2007-Special_Session-STB_ASR.html 

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics 

Call Deadline: 23-Mar-2007 

Meeting Description:

Call for Papers

Submission deadline: 23rd March

Special Session at Interspeech 2007, Antwerp, Belgium

Structure-Based and Template-Based Automatic Speech Recognition - 
Comparing parametric and non-parametric approaches

The purpose of this special session is to bring together researchers who have
special interest in novel techniques that are aimed at overcoming weaknesses of
HMMs for acoustic modeling in speech recognition. In particular, we plan to
address issues related to the representation and exploitation of long-range
temporal dependency in speech feature sequences, the incorporation of fine
phonetic detail in speech recognition algorithms and systems, comparisons of
pros and cons between the parametric and non-parametric approaches, and the
computation resource requirements for the two approaches. 

While hidden Markov modeling (HMM) has been the dominant technology for acoustic
modeling in automatic speech recognition today, many of its weaknesses have also
been well known and they have become the focus of much intensive research. One
prominent weakness in current HMMs is the handicap in representing long-span
temporal dependency in the acoustic feature sequence of speech, which,
nevertheless, is an essential property of speech dynamics. The main cause of
this handicap is the conditional IID (Independent and Identical Distribution)
assumption inherit in the HMM formalism. Furthermore, in the standard HMM
approach the focus is on verbal information. However, experiments have shown
that non-verbal information also plays an important role in human speech
recognition which the HMM framework has not attempted to address directly.
Numerous approaches have been taken over the past dozen years to address the
above weaknesses of HMMs. These approaches can be broadly classified into the
following two categories.

The first, parametric, structure-based approach establishes mathematical models
for stochastic trajectories/segments of speech utterances using various forms of
parametric characterization, including polynomials, linear dynamic systems, and
nonlinear dynamic systems embedding hidden structure of speech dynamics. In this
parametric modeling framework, systematic speaker variation can also be
satisfactorily handled. The essence of such a hidden-dynamic approach is that it
exploits knowledge and mechanisms of human speech production so as to provide
the structure of the multi-tiered stochastic process models. A specific layer in
this type of models represents long-range temporal dependency in a parametric form.

The second, non-parametric and template-based approach to overcoming the HMM
weaknesses involves direct exploitation of speech feature trajectories (i.e.,
'template') in the training data without any modeling assumptions. Due to the
dramatic increase of speech databases and computer storage capacity available
for training, as well as the exponentially expanded computational power,
non-parametric methods using the traditional pattern recognition techniques of
kNN (k-nearest-neighbor decision rule) and DTW (dynamic time warping) have
recently received substantial attention. Such template-based methods have also
been called exemplar-based or data-driven techniques in the literature.

This special session will start with an oral presentation in which an
introduction of the topic is provided, a short overview of the issues involved,
directions that have already been taken, and possible new approaches. At the end
there will be a panel discussion, and in between the contributed papers will be
presented.

Submission:
Researchers who are interested in contributing to this special session are
invited to submit a paper according to the regular submission procedure of
Interspeech 2007, and to select 'Structure-Based and Template-Based Automatic
Speech Recognition' in the special session field of the paper submission form.
The paper submission deadline is March 23, 2007.

Session organizers:
Li Deng <deng at microsoft.com>
Helmer Strik <strik at let.ru.nl>

Information about this special session can also be found at the following websites:
http://www.interspeech2007.org/Technical/structure_template_based_asr.php
http://lands.let.ru.nl/~strik/IS2007-Special_Session-STB_ASR.html

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