Mathematical modeling of the temporal acpects of speech based on human perceptual and cognitive mechanisms

该项目的目的是寻找人类检索语音时间结构的线索，了解其使用情况，并建立一种定量方法来评估给定语音的时间适当性或自然性，可以复制人类判断的表现。为此，实施了三项基本调查任务：心理物理层面的研究、语言层面的研究和评估模型的构建。这个项目的一个显著特点是，它强调心理物理方面几乎和语言一样多，即使它的主要对象是口语，因为一个人可以很容易地识别快速的语音，即使在意义未知的外语情况下，它被认为是语音的时间方面的处理无疑涉及非语言，因此语言独立的活动。通过专注于这种独立于给定的处理， ...更多信息 语言，我们开发了基本的技术，朝着一个系统的语言处理开销小，以及简单的可扩展性，以多种语言。主要结果如下。(I)心理物理水平：提出了一种模拟人耳听觉过程的语音参考点预测算法。该算法最重要的优点是它适用于几乎无限的语言变体，因为它不需要任何语言知识。(II)语言水平：一项实证研究表明，影响韵律单位感知的因素取决于特定语言对韵律单位的选择。这一发现为设计有效的外语训练方法时，韵律因素应占多大的比重提供了实际意义。(III)造型：通过在心理物理水平上整合来自调查的听觉功能，实现了一个数学模型来自动评估英语学习者的语音自然度。该模型的性能接近的母语为英语的教师的主观评价。这一结果不仅表明了心理物理因素在语音的适当性或自然性评价中的重要性，而且还意味着所提出的模型对多种语言的潜在可扩展性。少

The purpose of this project was to find clues by which humans retrieve the temporal structure of speech, to understand their usage, and to establish a quantitative method to evaluate the temporal adequateness or naturalness of a given speech sound that can replicate the performance of human judgment. For this purpose, three fundamental investigative tasks were implemented a study at the psychophysical level, a study at the linguistic level, and the construction of an evaluation model. One distinguishing feature of this project is that it emphasized the psychophysical aspects nearly as much as the linguistic, even though its primary object was spoken language.Since a person can easily recognize fast speech, even in the case of a foreign language where the meaning is unknown, it is assumed that the processing of the temporal aspects of speech undoubtedly involve non-linguistic and therefore language-independent activities. By concentrating on such processing that is independent of a give … More n language, we developed the basic technology toward a system with small overhead for language processing as well as simple extensibility to multiple languages. The major results follow.(I) Psychophysical level : An algorithm was developed to predict temporal reference points in a given speech by replicating the function of human auditory processing. This algorithm's most important benefit is its applicability to virtually unlimited language variations since it doesn't require any linguistic knowledge.(II) Linguistic level : An empirical study levealed that factors, which affect the perception of prosodic units, vary depending on the particular language's choice of units. This finding provides practical implications concerning how much weight should be placed on prosodic factors when designing effective foreign-language training methods.(III) Modeling : By integrating auditory functions derived from investigation at the psychophysical level, a mathematical model was implemented to automatically evaluate the naturalness of the speech of the English learners. The model's performance closely approximated the subjective evaluation of a native-speaking English instructor. This result not only suggests the importance of psychophysical factors in the adequateness or naturalness evaluation of speech but it also implies potential extensibility of the proposed model to multiple languages. Less