Speech is More Than Just an Audible Version of Text,
Abstract
Man-machine communication by text using keyboards and screens is much more firmly established than voice I/O. Partly because of this, voice tends to be regarded as an audible version of text. This view is misleading: it leads to an underestimation of both the difficulties and the potential of voice I/O. Speech encodes information on factors such as speaker identity and attitude and sentence structure in ways that have no counterpart in text. The style of language appropriate for speech is quite different from that appropriate for text. Speech output and input systems tend to ignore those aspects of the speech signal that are not directly represented in text, and they frequently use a style and syntax suited to text rather than speech. In the case of speech output, the technology needed to exploit the additional aspects of the speech signal is already appearing, and recordings illustrating the possibilities will be played. In the case of speech output, the technology is not yet developed, but the ability to manipulate features such as voice quality in speech output systems may be a powerful tool in learning how to exploit such features in speech input systems. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 1987
- Accession Number
- ADP005598
Entities
People
- Melvyn J. Hunt
Organizations
- National Research Council Canada