Experimental Phonetics (Dogil)

Prof. Dr. Grzegorz Dogil † headed the former department of Experimental Phonetics at the IMS.

Research and teaching activities of the IMS in Experimental Phonetics comprise several major areas. Our research in General and Linguistic Phonetics has included the study of speech prosody, syllable structure, and the integration of phonetics and phonology. We are also investigating computational models of speech perception and production. Speech technology research includes speech synthesis, speech signal analysis, and the systematic linking of speech and text databases. In the area of Neurophonetics our group is studying the cognitive foundations of human speech production as well as neurological disorders of speech motor control. Please visit our audio-visual tutorial Sprache und Gehirn (in German) to find out more about this area.

Administration

Faculty

Research scientists, assistants and doctoral students

Our current research projects are concentrated within the DFG collaborative research centre SFB 732.
We investigate the 

1. modelling of intonation, lexical and semantic aspects (project A1)
2. modelling aspects of Exemplar Theory (project A2)
3. modelling of convergence processes in speech and language (project A4)

• Sonderforschungsbereich 732 
  Incremental specification in context
  (supported by DFG, 7/2006-6/2010)
  • Project A1: Incremental specification of focus and givenness in a discourse context 
    Project A2: Exemplar-based speech representation 
    Project A3: Incremental specification in speech
    Project A4: Phonetic convergence in spontaneous speech 
• Schwerpunktprogramm 1234
  Sprachlautliche Kompetenz: Zwischen Grammatik, Signalverarbeitung und neuronaler Aktivität
  
  • Project: Phonetic perceptual reference space for prosodic phonological categories 
    (supported by DFG, 7/2006-6/2009)
• Prosody Acquisition
  • Project: Tonal and temporal development of L1 prosodic categories 
    (supported by DFG, 7/2008-6/2011)
  • Project: First language acquisition of acoustic correlates of word stress 
    (supported by DFG, 10/2004-9/2007)
• SmartWeb
  • Project: Speech synthesis in a system enabling mobile access to the Semantic Web 
    (supported by BMBF, 4/2004-3/2007)
• Prosody Production
  • Project: A computational model of target oriented production of prosody 
    (supported by DFG, 10/2001-9/2004)
• SmartKom
  • Project: Speech output component for a multimodal system 
    (supported by BMBF, 9/1999-9/2003)
• Schwerpunktprogramm Sprachproduktion
  • Project: The neuroanatomic foundation of language production: Visual examination using functional Magnet Resonance Imaging (fMRI) 
    (supported by DFG, 1997-2003)
• Speech Synthesis
  • Project: Modeling of the linguistic context for speech synthesis 
    (supported by DFG; project completed)
• Alignment Project
  • Project: Segmentation of Speech Data from the Mannheim Institute of German Language (IDS) 
    (supported by the Ministery of Research and Education, Baden-Wuerttemberg; project completed)
• Sonderforschungsbereich 340
  • Project C4: Aspects of Prosodic Structure for Discourse Representation Theory 
    (supported by DFG; project completed)

Partners in Germany

• Neurophonetics research group, at the Neurological Clinic, University of Tübingen
  (Hermann Ackermann, Ingo Hertrich)
  • Access to physiological equipment (Electromagnetic Articulography EMA, ELITE-system); formant synthesis tuesyn.
• Experimental MRI of the CNS, at the Dept of Neuroradiology, University of Tübingen
  (Walter Grodd)
  • Access to fMRI technique; joint project Neuroimaging of language production.
• University of Tübingen, Linguistics Department, Dr. phil. Petra Augurzky, Neurolinguistics, prosody syntax interface
• Language and speech therapy group
  at the Hospital Bogenhausen, Munich 
  (Wolfram Ziegler)
  • Cooperation in the areas of clinical linguistics and neurolinguistics.
• Institute of Phonetics
  at University of Saarbrücken
  (Bernd Möbius, Manfred Pützer)
  • Cooperation in the areas of prosody, speech synthesis and modelling of voice quality.
• Language and speech research group
  at Daimler-Benz Research Center 
  (Michael Weber)
  • The cooperation here concerns primarily automatic speech recognition. The research center in Ulm provides industrial internship opportunities for students.
• Advanced developments group
  at Sony International (Europe) GmbH, Stuttgart
  (Daniel Duran, Thomas Kemp)
  • Multimodal dialogue systems, speech technology.

International partners

Our Lab is a member of the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA).

• Business School Research, University of Manchester, Dermot Lynott, Exemplar-theoretic investigations into intonation and the lexicon
• Center for Spoken Language Understanding (CSLU) at OGI School of Science and Engineering / Oregon Health and Science University, Beaverton, OR, USA
  (Jan van Santen, Alexander Kain, Esther Klabbers)
• Department of Speech, Music and Hearing, KTH (Royal Institute of Technology), David House
• Laboratory of Language and Speech Technology, Institute of Linguistics, University of Poznan, Grazyna Demenko
• Memory and Language Lab, Arizona State University, Steve Goldinger
• Research unit Phonétique expérimentale et modélisation phonologique at CNRS-Paris III, France
  (G. Nick Clements, Annie Rialland)
• School of Linguistics and Applied Language Science, Victoria University of Wellington, Sasha Calhoun
• Simulation Technology, University of Arizona, Andrew Wedel
• Speech Synthesis group, Dept. of Speech and Image Processing Services Research at AT&T Labs Research, Florham Park, NJ, USA
  (Juergen Schroeter, Mark Beutnagel, Alistair Conkie, Ann Syrdal)

• Voice quality (Tutorial developed by Krzystof Marasek): EGG and voice quality
• Neurocognition of language (Tutorial developed by Jörg Mayer and Grzegorz Dogil): Sprache und Gehirn (in German)
• Download page for the open source IMS German Festival speech synthesis system

Hardware

• Recordings in the Acoustics Lab: Manual
• Datentransfer mit DAT
• Helpdesk for audio in the student pool

Software

• IMS German Festival documentation (IMS German Festival 1.2 (1.4.1))
• A short Festival tutorial
  
• Festival und CVS (German)
• CVS- und Cervisia-Manual (German; PostScript; Ursula Vollmer 11/2004)
• GToBI(S) Manual: Prosodic labeling for German (Jörg Mayer pdf-Versoin here)
• Annotieren von Intonation mit WaveSurfer (German; PDF; Katrin Schweitzer, 8/2006)
• Aligner: Usage and FAQ
• PaIntE intonation parametrization - FAQ
• Automatic Prosodic Aligner (ProsAlign)
• Praat Scripting Tutorial (Antje Schweitzer), data: here, solutions: here