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Human Language Technologies for Under-Resourced African Languages

Design, Challenges, and Prospects

  • Book
  • © 2018

Overview

  • Provides a practical approach to tonal language synthesis that will broaden innovations in communications engineering
  • Discusses a solution for tonal language system model design problems that are unique to growing markets in developing nations
  • Addresses a growing technological need of developing countries language preservation projects

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Speech Technology (BRIEFSSPEECHTECH)

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Table of contents (4 chapters)

Keywords

About this book

This book provides an overview of a recent and flexible approach to speech synthesis design to develop the first statistical parametric speech synthesizer for Ibibio, a West African tonal language. The design precludes the inflexibility encountered when modeling tonal features of the language and can be used for other tonal African languages.  Mobile use and technological innovations in developing African nations have exploded. With mobile technology, many of the barriers caused by infrastructure issues have vanished. In order to address issues that are unique to African tonal languages, the book uses Ibibio as a model.  The text reviews the language's speech characteristics, required for building the front end components of the design and propose a finite state transducer (FST), useful for modelling the language’s tonetactics. The statistical parametric approach discussed in the text, implements the Hidden Markov Model (HMM) technique, with the goal of creating a generic structure thatlearns the model from the text itself, and uses the data-driven approach to input specification.

Editors and Affiliations

  • Department of Computer Science, University of Uyo, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria

    Moses Effiong Ekpenyong

About the editor

Moses Effiong Ekpenyong is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and current Deputy Director of the Centre for Research and Development (CERAD), University of Uyo. He has been involved in research projects and has published widely in his area of specialty: Speech and Wireless Communications Technology, with over 100 research publications to his credit. He is a beneficiary of several awards/scholarships and research funding from notable organizations/institutions, such as FGN/Science and Technology Education Post-Basic (STEP-B)-World Bank; Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Nigeria; and Outside Echo, UK. He is a reviewer to national and international journals, and belongs to a number of professional bodies, including, Nigeria Computer Society (NCS), Nigerian Mathematical Society (NMS), Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), International Speech Communications Association (ISCA),and West African Linguistics Society (WALS).

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Human Language Technologies for Under-Resourced African Languages

  • Book Subtitle: Design, Challenges, and Prospects

  • Editors: Moses Effiong Ekpenyong

  • Series Title: SpringerBriefs in Speech Technology

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69960-8

  • Publisher: Springer Cham

  • eBook Packages: Engineering, Engineering (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-69958-5Published: 01 February 2018

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-69960-8Published: 25 January 2018

  • Series ISSN: 2191-737X

  • Series E-ISSN: 2191-7388

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIII, 134

  • Number of Illustrations: 25 b/w illustrations, 30 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Signal, Image and Speech Processing, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Computational Linguistics

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