Browsing by Author "Barros, Maria João"
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- Back close non-syllabic vowel [U] behaviour in European Portuguese: reduction or suppression?Publication . Barros, Maria João; Braga, Daniela; Freitas, Diamantino Silva; Teixeira, João Paulo; Latsch, VagnerIn this paper we analyse and describe the phonetic behavior of the non-tonic back closed vowel [u] in European Portuguese (EP) in what respects its quality and relative duration. Slow and faster speech was used. The objective of this work is to contribute with experimental results in order to obtain a more accurate comprehension of this vowel’s profile, which can be integrated and extended to other non-tonic vowels’ behaviors in the EP non-tonic vowel system. This may represent an important improvement in synthetic speech quality and naturalness, as it concerns acoustical parameters, rhythm and supra-segmental features, which means prosody. This study is inscribed in a project in Speech Synthesis for EP held by an inter-disciplinary group in intimate articulation between the engineering experience and tools and the linguistic approach.
- Correlation between phonetic factors and linguistic events regarding a prosodic pattern of European Portuguese: a practical proposalPublication . Freitas, Diamantino Silva; Braga, Daniela; Barros, Maria João; Latsch, Vagner; Teixeira, João PauloIn this article a prosodic model for European Portuguese (henceforth EP) based on a linguistic approach is described. It was developed in the scope of the Antigona Project, an electronic-commerce system using a speech interface (Speech to Text plus Text To Speech, the latter based on a time concatenation technique) for EP language. The purpose of our work is to contribute with practical strategies in order to improve synthetic speech quality and naturalness, concerning prosodic processing. It is also our goal to show that syntactic structures strongly determine prosody patterns in EP. It is also important to emphasize the pragmatic commercial objective of this system, which is selling a product. Therefore, this type of application deals with a specific vocabulary choice, it is displayed in predictable syntactic constructions and sentences, making prosodic contours and focus become expected. This study was held in intimate articulation between the engineering experience and tools and the linguistic approach. We believe that this work represents an important achievement for future research on synthetic speech processing in particular for EP. Moreover, it can be applied to other Romanic languages, regarding their syntactic resemblances.
- Phonetic events from the labeling the european Portuguese database for speech synthesis, FEUP/IPB-DBPublication . Teixeira, João Paulo; Freitas, Diamantino Silva; Braga, Daniela; Barros, Maria João; Latsch, VagnerIn this paper a labeled new speech signal database (FEUP/IPB-DB) in Standard European Portuguese (hereafter SEP) is presented. The objective of this work is, on one hand, to provide phonetic material for Text-to-Speech (TTS) systems construction, either from the start or to improve the quality of existing ones, and, on the other hand, to place at service of the SEP scientific community a phonetically and prosodically valuable speech corpus, essential for Speech Synthesis or Phonetics research. Our purpose is to make it available for the scientific community, since there isn’t any other DB of its kind for EP. The main features of the database will be described as well as some basic statistical aspects. A discussion of some methodological problems and some observed phenomena in experimental phonetics deriving from the speech signal labeling is also done. The approach in our work is to produce a resource that can be further improved in subsequent steps with minimal re-work. The phonetic, linguistic and technical consistency are guaranteed through the involvement of a multidisciplinary team.
- A project of speech input and output in an e-commerce applicationPublication . Freitas, Diamantino Silva; Moura, António; Braga, Daniela; Ferreira, Hélder Pires; Teixeira, João Paulo; Barros, Maria João; Gouveia, Paulo D.F.; Latsch, VagnerThe present paper describes the work done during the last year in the development of European Portuguese (EP) speech recognition and synthesis channels for an Internet e-commerce application. The objective of this work was to develop the appropriate speech input and output, to enable the user to more comfortably use an e-commerce web site issuing commands and options under guidance of a menu system. The speech interface operation guidelines are briefly described in their principles and resulting specifications for the speech channels, namely, menu structure and operation dynamics, and in the following, the system software approach and the speech recognition and synthesis modules are presented. A discussion is done about some project trade-offs and results obtained so far. Future perspectives of the on-going work are also presented.
- Sistemas de conversão texto-falaPublication . Teixeira, João Paulo; Barros, Maria João; Freitas, Diamantino SilvaNo presente trabalho apresenta-se a constituição de um sistema genérico de Conversão Texto-Fala, explicando as funções dos vários módulos constituintes e descrevendo as respectivas técnicas bem como o enquadramento científico com as áreas da linguística, comunicação e computação. Dada a grande importância da interface homem-máquina por voz, a função do conversor Texto-Fala, que aí tem um papel central, merece a atenção da comunidade de engenharia, em particular a electrotécnica e a informática. A presente comunicação tem como primeiro objectivo sensibilizar esta comunidade e contribuir para dinamizar a actividade neste domínio.