English phonologyEnglish phonology is the system of speech sounds used in spoken English. Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar (but not identical) phonological system. Among other things, most dialects have vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and a complex set of phonological features that distinguish fortis and lenis consonants (stops, affricates, and fricatives).
AllophoneIn phonology, an allophone (ˈæləfoʊn; from the Greek ἄλλος, , 'other' and φωνή, , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken sounds - or phones - or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plosive t (as in stop [ˈstɒp]) and the aspirated form th (as in top [ˈthɒp]) are allophones for the phoneme /t/, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in some languages such as Thai.
Voice user interfaceA voice-user interface (VUI) makes spoken human interaction with computers possible, using speech recognition to understand spoken commands and answer questions, and typically text to speech to play a reply. A voice command device is a device controlled with a voice user interface. Voice user interfaces have been added to automobiles, home automation systems, computer operating systems, home appliances like washing machines and microwave ovens, and television remote controls.
Phonological changeIn historical linguistics, phonological change is any sound change that alters the distribution of phonemes in a language. In other words, a language develops a new system of oppositions among its phonemes. Old contrasts may disappear, new ones may emerge, or they may simply be rearranged. Sound change may be an impetus for changes in the phonological structures of a language (and likewise, phonological change may sway the process of sound change).
DiaphonemeA diaphoneme is an abstract phonological unit that identifies a correspondence between related sounds of two or more varieties of a language or language cluster. For example, some English varieties contrast the vowel of late (/eː/) with that of wait or eight (/ɛɪ/). Other English varieties contrast the vowel of late or wait (/eː/) with that of eight (/ɛɪ/). This non-overlapping pair of phonemes from two different varieties can be reconciled by positing three different diaphonemes: A first diaphoneme for words like late (⫽e⫽), a second diaphoneme for words like wait (⫽ei⫽), and a third diaphoneme for words like eight (⫽ex⫽).
PhonemeIn phonology and linguistics, a phoneme (ˈfoʊniːm) is a unit of phone that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west of England, the sound patterns sɪn (sin) and sɪŋ (sing) are two separate words that are distinguished by the substitution of one phoneme, /n/, for another phoneme, /ŋ/. Two words like this that differ in meaning through the contrast of a single phoneme form a minimal pair.
Speech recognitionSpeech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. It is also known as automatic speech recognition (ASR), computer speech recognition or speech to text (STT). It incorporates knowledge and research in the computer science, linguistics and computer engineering fields. The reverse process is speech synthesis.
SonorantIn phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels are sonorants, as are semivowels like [j] and [w], nasal consonants like [m] and [n], and liquid consonants like [l] and [r]. This set of sounds contrasts with the obstruents (stops, affricates and fricatives).
Dialogue systemA dialogue system, or conversational agent (CA), is a computer system intended to converse with a human. Dialogue systems employed one or more of text, speech, graphics, haptics, gestures, and other modes for communication on both the input and output channel. The elements of a dialogue system are not defined because this idea is under research, however, they are different from chatbot. The typical GUI wizard engages in a sort of dialogue, but it includes very few of the common dialogue system components, and the dialogue state is trivial.
Speech synthesisSpeech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal language text into speech; other systems render symbolic linguistic representations like phonetic transcriptions into speech. The reverse process is speech recognition. Synthesized speech can be created by concatenating pieces of recorded speech that are stored in a database.
Comparative methodIn linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards to infer the properties of that ancestor. The comparative method may be contrasted with the method of internal reconstruction in which the internal development of a single language is inferred by the analysis of features within that language.
Optical character recognitionOptical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronic or mechanical conversion of s of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a scene photo (for example the text on signs and billboards in a landscape photo) or from subtitle text superimposed on an image (for example: from a television broadcast).
Facial recognition systemA facial recognition system is a technology potentially capable of matching a human face from a or a video frame against a database of faces. Such a system is typically employed to authenticate users through ID verification services, and works by pinpointing and measuring facial features from a given image. Development began on similar systems in the 1960s, beginning as a form of computer application. Since their inception, facial recognition systems have seen wider uses in recent times on smartphones and in other forms of technology, such as robotics.
Indigenous languages of the AmericasOver a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large number of language isolates), as well as a number of extinct languages that are unclassified because of a lack of data. Many proposals have been made to relate some or all of these languages to each other, with varying degrees of success.
Medical researchMedical research (or biomedical research), also known as experimental medicine, encompasses a wide array of research, extending from "basic research" (also called bench science or bench research), – involving fundamental scientific principles that may apply to a preclinical understanding – to clinical research, which involves studies of people who may be subjects in clinical trials. Within this spectrum is applied research, or translational research, conducted to expand knowledge in the field of medicine.
Named-entity recognitionNamed-entity recognition (NER) (also known as (named) entity identification, entity chunking, and entity extraction) is a subtask of information extraction that seeks to locate and classify named entities mentioned in unstructured text into pre-defined categories such as person names, organizations, locations, medical codes, time expressions, quantities, monetary values, percentages, etc. Most research on NER/NEE systems has been structured as taking an unannotated block of text, such as this one: Jim bought 300 shares of Acme Corp.
Interactive voice responseInteractive voice response (IVR) is a technology that allows telephone users to interact with a computer-operated telephone system through the use of voice and DTMF tones input with a keypad. In telecommunications, IVR allows customers to interact with a company's host system via a telephone keypad or by speech recognition, after which services can be inquired about through the IVR dialogue. IVR systems can respond with pre-recorded or dynamically generated audio to further direct users on how to proceed.
Natural language processingNatural language processing (NLP) is an interdisciplinary subfield of linguistics and computer science. It is primarily concerned with processing natural language datasets, such as text corpora or speech corpora, using either rule-based or probabilistic (i.e. statistical and, most recently, neural network-based) machine learning approaches. The goal is a computer capable of "understanding" the contents of documents, including the contextual nuances of the language within them.
Affective computingAffective computing is the study and development of systems and devices that can recognize, interpret, process, and simulate human affects. It is an interdisciplinary field spanning computer science, psychology, and cognitive science. While some core ideas in the field may be traced as far back as to early philosophical inquiries into emotion, the more modern branch of computer science originated with Rosalind Picard's 1995 paper on affective computing and her book Affective Computing published by MIT Press.
Institutional review boardAn institutional review board (IRB), also known as an independent ethics committee (IEC), ethical review board (ERB), or research ethics board (REB), is a committee at an institution that applies research ethics by reviewing the methods proposed for research done at that institution to ensure that the projects are ethical. Such boards are formally designated to approve (or reject), monitor, and review biomedical and behavioral research involving humans, and they are legally required in some countries under certain specified circumstances.
