A Common Prosody Platform for Testing Theories and Models of Speech Prosody

韵律在语义与词语、短语和句子的口语表达之间的复杂映射中起着重要的作用，它对于我们理解人类的交流以及在自动语言生成和语义识别中利用韵律信息的能力至关重要。然而，许多基本问题仍未解决，有些问题仍在激烈辩论中。这种缺乏共识导致了在开发具有处理韵律能力的语音应用程序方面进展缓慢。该项目是一个合作的努力，以加快韵律研究的进展，通过开发一个共同的韵律平台（CPP）。CPP将由一个开放访问的网站组成，该网站以Praat脚本的形式托管了一系列可训练的模型，每个模型都实现了一个主要的韵律理论。所有脚本将包括A）特定理论的基本假设的计算实现，其能够生成表面韵律形式（最初，F0和持续时间），以及B）用于自动合成分析和全局优化的一组学习算法，其允许在标记有理论特定类别的任何语音语料库上训练脚本。因此，CPP将促进理论评估，使他们能够作出数值预测，可以直接与自然韵律的细节。CPP将在自动音段韵律（AM）理论、平行编码和目标近似（PENTA）模型、发音音系/任务动态模型（TADA）和命令反应（Fujisaki）模型上进行测试，并将其应用于英语、希腊语、汉语和Itunyoso Trique（一种濒危声调语言）。CPP的发展将有助于弥合理论概念化、实证研究和计算建模之间的差距。由此产生的可训练模型的计算性质也将使它们易于转移到应用领域，包括语音技术，语言教学和语音交流障碍。本项目中开发的研究方法也可以扩展到语音研究的一般范式，即通过计算建模进行理论测试。

Prosody plays an important role in the complex mapping between meaning and the spoken expression of words, phrases and sentences; it is critical to our understanding of human communication and to our ability to exploit prosodic information in both automated language production and meaning recognition.Prosody research has seen significant development in recent decades, and numerous theories and computational models have been proposed. However, many fundamental issues remain unresolved and some are still under heated debate. This lack of consensus has resulted in slow advances in developing speech applications with capabilities for processing prosody. This project is a collaborative effort to accelerate progress in prosody research by developing a Common Prosody Platform (CPP). CPP will consist of an open-access web site that hosts a collection of trainable models in the form of Praat scripts, each implementing a major theory of prosody. All the scripts will consist of A) a computational realization of the basic assumptions of a particular theory, which is capable of generating surface prosodic forms (initially, F0 and duration), and B) a set of learning algorithms for automatic analysis-by-synthesis and global optimization, which allow the script to be trained on any speech corpora marked up with theory-specific categories. CPP will therefore facilitate theory evaluation by enabling them to make numerical predictions that can be directly compared with natural prosody in fine detail. CPP will be tested on autosegmental-metrical (AM) theory, Parallel Encoding and Target Approximation (PENTA) model, articulatory phonology/task dynamic model (TADA), and command response (Fujisaki) model, and apply them to English, Greek, Mandarin and Itunyoso Trique (an endangered tone language).The development of CPP will help bridge the current gaps between theoretical conceptualization, empirical investigation and computational modeling. The computational nature of the resulting trainable models will also make them readily transferable to applied areas, including speech technology, language teaching and speech communication disorders. The research approach developed in this project may also be extendable to a general paradigm in speech research, namely, theory testing by computational modeling.