Organization: Carstens Medizinelektronik GmbH
Subject: WORKSHOP ON ARTICULATORY DATABASES
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 95 12:23:19 +0100     
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From: carstens@articulograph.venture.de (Bahne Carstens)
Newsgroups: comp.speech
Message-ID: <02-22-1995.659@articu>
X-MKSIA-SN: 3990390208
Lines: 118


Hello,

Phil Hoole asked me to post the following announcment:


ACCOR WORKSHOP ON ARTICULATORY DATABASES
                                    
Munich, Thursday 25th and Friday 26th May, 1995

For further information contact:

Phil Hoole

Institut fuer Phonetik
Munich University
Schellingstr. 3
D - 80799 Munich
Germany
Fax: + 49 89 2800362
Email : HOOLE@SUN1.PHONETIK.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE


                               WORKSHOP ON
                         ARTICULATORY DATABASES
                                    
                                 Munich
                 Thursday 25th and Friday 26th May, 1995


We are currently starting the preparations for a two-day
workshop on articulatory databases. This will be  the third in
the series of workshops organized by the ACCOR working group
(a consortium of phonetic institutes financed by the European
Community's ESPRIT programme) and and follows the
Electromagnetic Articulography meeting in Munich (April,
1992), and the Tongue Modelling meeting in Barcelona (December
1993).

A few words on the aims of a meeting devoted to such an
apparently dry topic:

The basic premise is that the free availability of
articulatory data could provide benefits in several partly
overlapping areas:

     In basic research it could allow investigators to test
     hypotheses formulated in articulatory terms on a much
     wider range of data than the individual worker would
     normally be able to acquire or access unaided.

     It could promote the development and testing of
     algorithms for deriving articulatory representations from
     acoustic data - relevant both for basic understanding of
     speech production as well as in potential applications
     such as speech displays for training the speech impaired.

     It could promote the development and testing of
     algorithms for speech synthesis/recognition using an
     articulatory level of representation.

The aim of the workshop would be to generate an exchange of
ideas among people active in these areas in order to identify,
for example (further suggestions welcome):

1)   What articulatory data is in existence that it would be
     beneficial to make more freely available
     (archival/retrospective approach)?

2)   What standards should freely available data meet?
     - Specification of recording conditions
     - Anatomical frames of reference
     - Levels of accuracy/reliability
     - Linguistic specification of the speech samples
     - Preferred data structures for distribution.
     - Any other issues relevant to the data being used
     without risk of misinterpretation by people not actually
     involved in the the details of acquisition

     Articulatory data can come in many guises depending on
     the speech subsystem tapped into and the transduction
     technique used. Thus, it is possible to monitor position
     (1, 2 or 3 dimensions), force, EMG, airpressure/flow with
     techniques that may be static or dynamic, may involve
     imaging or point-tracking etc. etc. We think that people
     directly involved in acquisition can also benefit from
     considering how techniques can be standardized to promote
     maximum comparability of recordings made at different
     sites and with different hardware.

3)   In analogy to acoustic databases (where unlabelled data
     is of only the most limited use), what segmentation and
     labelling information (and tools for the exploitation
     thereof) could/should be made available with the raw data
     to facilitate flexible access for different purposes?

4)   For future recordings, what categories of data and
     corpora would be potentially of most widespread use?


If you are interested in participating please contact Phil
Hoole (preferably by Email) at the address below as soon as
possible. Further information on registration and format for
presentations will be distributed early in 1995.

Please also draw this letter to the attention of any
colleagues you think might be interested.

Phil Hoole and Hans Tillmann

Institut fuer Phonetik
Munich University
Schellingstr. 3
D - 80799 Munich
Germany
Fax: + 49 89 2800362
Email : HOOLE@SUN1.PHONETIK.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE

