Object-Based Modelling for Representing and Processing Speech Corpora

摘要

This thesis deals with modelling data existing in large speech corpora using an object-oriented paradigm which captures important linguistic structures. Information from corpora is transformed into objects and are assigned properties regarding their behaviour. These objects, called speech units, are placed onto a multi-dimensional framework and have their relationships to other units explicitly defined through the use of links. Frameworks that model temporal utterances or atemporal information like speaker characteristics and recording conditions can be searched efficiently for contextual matches. Speech units that match desired contexts are the result of successful linguistically motivated queries and can be used in further speech processing tasks in the same computational environment. This allows for empirical studies of speech and its relation to linguistic structures to be carried out, and for the training and testing of applications like speech recognition and synthesis.