A Database of Children's Speech

该项目的目标是创建一个儿童朗读语音数据库，具有语音研究所需的数字质量。这样的数据在今天是无法获得的，但对于实现儿童与机器之间的有效语音交流至关重要。所采用的方法包括选择适当的文本以供阅读，记录好的和差的读者，标记演讲，验证标记的质量，并将数据组织成易于访问的形式。儿童语音数据库是在教育、娱乐和其他社会和经济重要领域应用的关键条件。这项工作的预期直接影响包括将数据库提供给语言数据联盟，以便分发给言语研究人员。应用程序包括一个自动阅读教练，它可以听孩子们大声朗读，并在需要时提供帮助。这样一个教练的原型是在之前NSF的支持下开发的，但它的可用性和健壮性受到限制，因为它的语音识别器是针对成人语音进行训练的。为了达到所需的听力准确度，儿童语音数据库是必要的。

The objective of this project is to create a database of children's read speech with the digital quality needed for speech research. Such data is unavailable today, but essential to achieving effective speech communication between children and machines. The methods to be employed include selecting appropriate texts to be read, recording good and poor readers, labelling the speech, verifying the quality of the labels, and organizing the data into an easily accessible form. A database of children's speech is a key enabling condition for applications in education, entertainment, and other socially and economically important fields. Expected direct impact of the work includes making the database available to the Linguistic Data Consortium for distribution to speech researchers. Applications include an automated reading coach that listens to children read aloud, and helps when needed. A prototype of such a coach was developed with previous NSF support, but its usability and robustness were limited because its speech recognizer was trained on adult speech. A children's speech database is necessary to achieve the required accuracy in listening.