Julius Zimmermann - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Julius Zimmermann

2022 12th International Conference on Advanced Computer Information Technologies (ACIT)

Proizvodnja i percepcija govora, 2010

The study compares the basic principles of the Fourier transform and the wavelet transform of aco... more The study compares the basic principles of the Fourier transform and the wavelet transform of acoustic speech in discrete form. In order to show the higher time resolution of scalogram, the sonagram and the scalogram of one glottal pulse of the vowel /e/ were used as an example.

Word Structure, 2018

The main goal of the paper is to analyze and evaluate the nature and the role of word-formation s... more The main goal of the paper is to analyze and evaluate the nature and the role of word-formation systems in a sample of 73 European languages. The basis for the comparison is 100 word-formation features representing 12 word-formation processes. The data is used to examine (a) the structural richness of word-formation systems at the level of individual languages, language genera, families and the linguistic area of Europe, and (b) the parameter of Maximum Feature Occurrence that identifies those word-formation features that are present in all languages under consideration, i.e., in all languages of a genus, a family or a linguistic area of Europe. In the latter case, it identifies the so-called Euroversals. From the diachronic perspective, the paper evaluates the degree of diversification of languages belonging to the same language genus and language family.

U ovoj studiji istražujemo varijacijsku disperziju frekvencijskih (rezonancijskih) vrhova, maksim... more U ovoj studiji istražujemo varijacijsku disperziju frekvencijskih (rezonancijskih) vrhova, maksimuma zvukovnoga spektra, pojačavanje skupina harmonijskih sastavnica signala, for mana ta (IsaČenko, 1968., str. 38. i dr.; Krdl\u27 - Sabol, 1989., str. 171 i dr.) slovačkih kratkih vokala (o istraživanju čeških vokalskih varijanata u inicijalnoj, medija/noj i finalnoj glasovnoj kombinaciji usp. Borovičkova - Malač, 1967., str. 13-29). Naša se opažanja teorijski dotiču pitanja stupnja fonološke relevantnosti zvukovnih osobina koje sadrže signalni korelativi vokalskih fonema konkretnoga fonskog sustava; a općenitije je riječ o istraživanju pojedinačnoga, varijantnog i općega, invarijantnog (kao odnosa koji se općenito primjenjuje u jezičnome sustavu) i njegova "očitovanja" u fonološkim jedinicama. Ta se problematika može suziti na fonetski i fonološki aspekt (razlikujemo, naime, ne samo I., fonetski i II. fonološki stupanj apstrakcije nego i druge vrste odnosa pojedinačnoga i op...

This paper describes a very fine, suprasegmental linguistic feature – anticipation. An ’anticipat... more This paper describes a very fine, suprasegmental linguistic feature – anticipation. An ’anticipation nucleus’ is a speech signal that refers to the uniquely modulated part of an utterance that indicates continuation, it also allows for reduced semantic content in the utterance. The extent that anticipation can be expressed relies on the phonetic, syntactic, and semantic capacity of a language. In this work the special attention to the prosodic structure of speech signal was paid regarding to this issue. The work provides information about performed perceptual detection of anticipation nuclei, describes the measurement of key prosodic parameters and presents obtained results of statistical analysis.

2018 9th IEEE International Conference on Cognitive Infocommunications (CogInfoCom), 2018

This work is devoted to the phenomenon of the anticipation, which is made by human interlocuters ... more This work is devoted to the phenomenon of the anticipation, which is made by human interlocuters of dialog during listening. People are often able to anticipate next constituents of the unfold utterance just uttered by the opposite interlocutor of the dialog. It plays an important role e.g. in the task of simultaneous interpretation. The proposed paper is an initial study focused on this phenomenon from human-machine communication point of view. It tries to discuss aspects, applications and benefits of considering anticipation on the side of human as well as machine interlocutor of dialog. Possibility of extending machines with anticipation capability is discussed for each element of human-machine communication chain. Anticipation closely relates to sentence comprehension, mutual understanding and turn-taking. The paper proposes ideas how the rapid turn-taking can be increased by considering human anticipation capability and by involving machine anticipation techniques. Moreover it brings ideas how anticipation capability can be integrated for particular modules of the human-machine speech communication chain.

Communications - Scientific letters of the University of Zilina, 2011

2019 10th IEEE International Conference on Cognitive Infocommunications (CogInfoCom)

The paper describes the system and scenario for robot-assisted children speech audiometry after i... more The paper describes the system and scenario for robot-assisted children speech audiometry after implantation of a cochlear implant for pediatric patients. The motivation behind presented work was to reduce stress and fear of children, who must undergo postoperative audiometry. We focused on Conditioned Play Audiometry in the form of a “picture tests”, where patients select one of pictures, which represent word/utterance just heard in Slovak. Robot NAO was used to play recordings to children. The described system is a proof of concept for robot-assisted children audiometry, which enables us to research aspects and possibilities in this field. We performed initial testing of the designed system and scenario with healthy children. First experiences show a positive influence of the children on their mood and motivation.

2020 18th International Conference on Emerging eLearning Technologies and Applications (ICETA)

This paper describes and discusses the process and the role of the hearing screening of children ... more This paper describes and discusses the process and the role of the hearing screening of children with hearing impairment in education using the interactive audiometry application that offers the easiest and most comfortable and attractive way for rapid daily (self)testing. The proposed audiometry application looks like a game that enables the effective measuring of hearing capabilities of child patients in home environment. Besides the description of the audiometry application itself, the paper is focused also on the selection of appropriate words and information about the processing of related sound stimuli. This work brings a possible scenario for daily testing using this audiometry application. It discuss also an alternative Ling 6 sound test that can effectively verify the working of a hearing aid. The information provided clearly indicates the need for regular hearing measurements to support permanent education and personal development.

This study deals with a specific speech phenomenon, anticipation, a suprasegmental feature of spe... more This study deals with a specific speech phenomenon, anticipation, a suprasegmental feature of speech utterance that allows an interpreter to predict, what the speaker has in his/her mind and how his/her speech will continue in real time. Based on extensive perceptual testing, a speech corpus containing anticipation foci was created. These data patterns of the nucleus were statistically analysed and obtained parameters show how suprasegmental characteristics of anticipation should be effectively analysed. Two systems were developed for anticipation nucleus detection, Hidden Markov Models and another based on fuzzy logic. These approaches were trained, and then their detection score was evaluated. Proposed detection algorithms and statistical characteristics of anticipatory foci can be applied in interpreting support equipment or in the process of interpreting education and also used for the improvement of a speech recognition system, a dialogue management system in a human-machine in...

This paper describes the development of the speech audiometry application for pediatric patients ... more This paper describes the development of the speech audiometry application for pediatric patients in Slovak language and experiences obtained during testing with healthy children, hearing-impaired children, and elderly persons. The first motivation behind the presented work was to reduce the stress and fear of the children, who must undergo postoperative audiometry, but over time, we changed our direction to the simple game-like mobile application for the detection of possible hearing problems of children in the home environment. Conditioned play audiometry principles were adopted to create a speech audiometry application, where children help the virtual robot Thomas assign words to pictures; this can be described as a speech recognition test. Several game scenarios together with the setting condition issues were created, tested, and discussed. First experiences show a positive influence on the children’s mood and motivation.

Govor, 1997

The study investigates the variation dispersion of frequency (resonant) peaks, the maximum of the... more The study investigates the variation dispersion of frequency (resonant) peaks, the maximum of the sound spectre, the intensification of the groups of harmonic signal components or formants (Isacenko 1968, p.38, Kral', Sabol 1989, p. 171) of Slovakian short vowels (on the study of Czech vocalic variants in the initial, medial and final sound combination cf. Borovickova, Malac 1967, pp. 13-29). Our observations theoretically touch on the extent of the phonological relevance of sound characteristics contained in the signal correlatives of vocalic phonemes of a particular phonic system. At a more general level the paper deals with the particular, the variant and the general, the invariant (as a relation which is commonly applied in the linguistic system) and its "manifestation" in the phonological units. These issues may be narrowed down to a phonetic and phonological aspect (namely, we distinguish not only I., phonetic and II., the phonological degree of abstractness but also some other kind of relationship between the particular and the general in the sound units) of research and evaluation of sound phenomena as the different levels of the dialectical relationship which is manifested in language as a specific system of signs for the idealization of the real world. On the basis of the relationship of the particular and general in the sound units (at the different "levels " of this relationship, particularly at the level of a phone - F, phoneme - Fm and morphophoneme - MFm cf. Sabol 1989, pp. 18-31) it might unambiguously explain and characterize individual phonological theories, conceptions and schools; for example, the Prague School works along the line Fm, the Moscow phonological school along the line F and MFm, the Petrograd phonological school along the line F and partly Fm, the American followers of generative grammar along the line MFm. It might be claimed that it is a question of "partial" aspects and views on particular "kinds" of relationships between particular and general in the sound units. Let us assume that different "incompatibilities" of particular phonological conceptions have derived from the fact that the same sound phenomenon was interpreted from different aspects with regard to F, Fm and MFm with elements from different levels being opposed or positioned one along the other "equally" from the point of view of particular and general. The incompatibility within one phonological conception is the result of the fact that particular sound phenomena were not studied at the same level (cf. the problem ofn eutralization which is probably the most difficult to solve in the phonological research and which at the same time marks the point where the plausibility of a particular phonological conception can best be testified; see Sabol 1983 for more elaborated data). In the experimental phonetic and phonological testing (based on the variant and the invariant, relevance and irrelevance of the phonic features in the acoustic signal) an attempt was made first of all to answer the question about the impact of timbre of vowels on the dynamics of F1 and F2 (in vowels i, e and F3) by using elements of the subsystem of short Slovakian vowels. Three male subjects were recorded on tape producing 30 realizations of vowels in the combination CVC and these were analyzed (six words for each analyzed vowel). Table 1 shows that standard deviation (and consequently dispersion) of the formant values is higher in formants F2 and F3 than in Fl. The question might be posed as to the field of tolerance or allowed range of formants responsible for the vowel (type) timbre. To answer the question an artificial deformation of formants was performed by a resynthesis of the primary speech signal with different experimental values of F1, F2 and F3. By using resynthesis the tolerance of formants Fl and F2 was reduced (in vowels i and e also F3) of the vowel [a] in the word [pas] of the first subject).

Phonetic research in the past decades has exerted a great effort to describe the principles of re... more Phonetic research in the past decades has exerted a great effort to describe the principles of relative prominence in speech. The importance of this issue is felt in many areas of both pure and applied phonetics spilling over to the fields of speech technology, where prominence can help to disambiguate words in recognition tasks or make synthesized speech more natural, convincing and unequivocal, the field of didactics, where it can, for instance, help students of foreign languages to acquire better pronunciation, or the field of forensic science, where it can help to establish affective state of the speaker or his/her individual habits in accenting parts of linguistic messages in order to check the identity. These are just a few examples from a large pool of possibilities. Despite the ingenious studies of Fry (1955, 1958) the questions of the relevant factors of perceptual prominence have not been satisfactorily answered. D. Fry manipulated durations of synthetic segments, their re...

One of the most crucial tasks in speech processing, whether in the psychological or the technolog... more One of the most crucial tasks in speech processing, whether in the psychological or the technological domain, is the division of the speech continuum into words. Many approaches have been tested to date, yet clear answers as to the foundations of the word recognition in speech are still missing. The present study employs a relatively new technological approach, the wavelet transform of the speech signal, to explore its potentials in helping to unravel the principles of word boundary identification. Based on the MATLAB wavelet toolkit, we designed an interface which provides clearly specified samples of spectral bands of the speech signal for further perceptual testing. The wavelet based decomposition and resynthesis seem to provide encouragingly unrestrained insight into the composition of the speech signal. The importance of individual spectral sections has been tested and confronted with the temporal structure of energy patterning to hypothesize about individual listeners' per...

This paper deals with possibilities of detection of various characteristics of acoustic speech si... more This paper deals with possibilities of detection of various characteristics of acoustic speech signal – timbre. There are discussed all parameters of signal in which it is possible to find the presence of personal speech modification (segments, suprasegments, temporal and amplitude lability, stylistics and semantics). The authors at first analyze possibilities of experimental phonetics. In order to name methodic this came into consideration at decision about how to profit to understanding of individual speech parameters. In the end there is shown that the most suitable choice is articulation synthesis of speech signal by means of simulator of articulation tract including its dynamic changes in process of speech generation.

Studies in Morphology, 2015

The paper discusses two significant tendencies in the formation of new complex words, the tendenc... more The paper discusses two significant tendencies in the formation of new complex words, the tendency towards semantic transparency and the tendency towards economy of expression. A new conception of the notion of semantic transparency is proposed within the framework of an onomasiological theory. It draws on the concept of the onomasiological type which is based on the Morpheme-to-Seme-Assignment Principle. Furthermore, the concept of semantic transparency is interrelated to that of meaning predictability. It is demonstrated that various word-formation strategies reflecting a language user’s preference for semantic transparency or formal economy significantly affect the process of complex word meaning predictability. A cross-linguistic experiment includes three sets of tasks and covers four languages, Slovak, Bulgarian, Hungarian and English. The aim is to examine, analyze and discuss preferred naming strategies in terms of three research questions pertaining to the central topic of this paper.

Word Structure, 2010

Universals Archive (Universal #1926) indicates a universal tendency for sound symbolism in refere... more Universals Archive (Universal #1926) indicates a universal tendency for sound symbolism in reference to the expression of diminutives and augmentatives. The research ( Štekauer et al. 2009 ) carried out on European languages has not proved the tendency at all. Therefore, our research was extended to cover three language families – Indo-European, Niger-Congo and Austronesian. A three-step analysis examining different aspects of phonetic symbolism was carried out on a core vocabulary of 35 lexical items. A research sample was selected out of 60 languages. The evaluative markers were analyzed according to both phonetic classification of vowels and consonants and Ultan's and Niewenhuis' conclusions on the dominance of palatal and post-alveolar consonants in diminutive markers. Finally, the data obtained in our sample languages was evaluated by means of a three-dimensional model illustrating the place of articulation of the individual segments.

International Conference Technical Computing Prague, 2008

The measurement and analysis of phonetic parameters from the acoustic speech signal finds its app... more The measurement and analysis of phonetic parameters from the acoustic speech signal finds its applications not only in linguistics itself but also in technical fields whose objective is solving the problem of machine-human communication. The paper presents a method of fundamental frequency measurement in speech using the wavelet transform. Graphical display of the results, calibration into semitones and relevance to speech are also discussed.

The article is focused on the explication of the Menzerath-Altmann law and its most general formu... more The article is focused on the explication of the Menzerath-Altmann law and its most general formulation: the longer the language construct, the smaller its constituents. The validity of the law is tested on the text by S. Rakús – Poetika prozaického textu (Látka, téma, problém, tvar), in which relation between the mean length of syllable and the number of syllables in a word is investigated. The indirect dependence of these two values is proved with one exception – the law does not hold for single syllable words in the text by S. Rakús. At the conclusion of the paper a mathematical formula of the above-mentioned relation in analyzed text is derived.