Language in Cognitive Science

Research Areas for Language Computational models of speech production and perception Signal processing for speech analysis, enhancement and transformation applications Algorithms and models for speech recognition and synthesis Speaker and language recognition Natural language processing for speech understanding and generation (cont.  )

More Research Areas… Information retrieval and summarization Computational models of discourse and dialog Evaluation of human and computer system performance --Research is currently being carried out by practitioners of artificial intelligence, computer science, electronic engineering, linguistics, phonetics, and psychology.

Language Technology (LT) Two Categories 1. Spoken Language 2. Written Language 3. Two Constructs 4. Sending Language (Acquisition &Translation) 5. Receiving Language (Generation & Output)

Spoken Language Only in Spoken Language (not written): -- filled pauses -- false starts -- hesitations -- ungrammatical constructions

Spoken, cont. Optical Information -- facial expressions (eye contact, movement of eyebrows, smiles or frowns, etc.) -- gestures (hand movement, body positioning, posture, etc.)

LT terms Prosody—acoustic structure that extends over several segments or words (indicates user’s intention) -stress, intonation (tone), & rhythm  Modeling Dynamics—accounting for differences in individual articulators  Multimodality—dealing with several principles and aspects of speech/language

Approaches in LT--Templates Use of Templates -pre-programmed -domain & task specific - sets probabilities, restrictions, allowances, distribution

Approaches in LT-Components Use of components (an example) In attempting to send language: (1) Generate the message. This would require a planning component (brain forming ideas) and a syntatic generation component (spellcheck) (2)Output-requires some type of interface

Approaches in LT— Algorithms and Models Use of Algorithms: essential to setting up templates for language—are what enables programmer to set up the restrictions, distributions, etc… Use of Models (an example) Acoustic Model: Template design for measuring the prosody of a given sample of language (transition probabilities, output distributions, etc..)

Some Tools for LT CSLU Toolkit: involves speech recognition, natural language understanding, speech synthesis, facial animation technologies Computerized Speech Labs (CSL): 2 models (4300B & 4100) less sophisticated than CSLU toolkit Winpitch and Winpitch II: spectrographic display, prosodic morphing