LINGUIST List 14.144

Wed Jan 15 2003

FYI: EUSTACE Corpus, English, Language Institute

Editor for this issue: James Yuells <jameslinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Laurence White, EUSTACE speech corpus
2. Alain Th�riault, Food for thoughts
3. Danko Sipka, Summer Language Opportunities

We are pleased to announce the release of EUSTACE, the Edinburgh
University Speech Timing Archive and Corpus of English, available at

 http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/eustace

We hope that this resource will be useful for phonetics researchers
and speech technologists working on synthesis and recognition. 

The EUSTACE speech corpus comprises 4608 spoken sentences recorded at
the department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics of Edinburgh
University. These sentences, spoken by six speakers of British
English, were designed to examine a number of durational effects in
speech and are controlled for length and phonetic content.
Subconstituents of key words in each sentence have been identified by
labels in ''xlabel'' (ESPS) format, which also include notes about the
prosodic realisation of some of the sentences.

Example sentences are available for playback on the website. The
complete archive, available for downloading, includes a structured
list of the sentences, the speech recordings and the label files,
together with full documentation including details of the experimental
design, recording procedure and labelling methodology. Speech waveform
files are available in ''.wav'' (RIFF) format and ''.sd'' (ESPS) format.
The downloadable corpus is free, and licensed for non-commercial use
only.

Details of the results of the original research, as described in
Laurence White's PhD dissertation, ''English speech timing: a domain
and locus approach'', are also included on the website, and the full
text of the dissertation is available for downloading.

Comments and questions are welcome. Please contact Laurence White
(laurenceling.ed.ac.uk) or Simon King (simon.kinged.ac.uk). 

I would like to offer this little essay found on the Blague-L archives at 
http://www.ventdelaitue.org/blagues-l/

Of course, we have all seen such little inconsistencies in most languages, but 
I thought a reminder might light-up the day (why would one want to add light in 
day-time?) of some list members

Cheers

Alain

English is a crazy language

Let's face it -- English is a crazy language. There is no egg in 
eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. 
English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. 
Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. 
We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find 
that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig 
is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't 
groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't 
the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? 
One index, 2 indices?

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend, that 
you comb through annals of history but not a single annal? If you have a 
bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you 
call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preacher praught? If a vegetarian eats 
vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? If you wrote a letter, perhaps 
you bote your tongue?

Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an 
asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a 
play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have 
noses that run and feet that smell? Park on driveways and drive on parkways?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and
wise guy are opposites? How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while 
quite a lot and quite a few are alike? How can the weather be hot as 
hell one day and cold as hell another?

Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are 
absent? Have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a strapful gown? Met a 
sung hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever run into someone 
who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable? And where are all 
those people who ARE spring chickens or who would ACTUALLY hurt a fly?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your 
house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by 
filling it out and in which an alarm clock goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the 
creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn't a race at all). 
That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the 
lights are out, they are invisible. And why, when I wind up my watch, I 
start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it.

X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-priority: Normal
Status: RO

Dear discussion group members:

Drawing upon the interest of this discussion group in our target
languages, we are taking the liberty to inform you about the special
language learning opportunities for you and your students offered in the
summer of 2003 by the Arizona State University Critical Languages
Institute (CLI). The CLI (http://www.asu.edu/cli) offers annual summer
language courses for less-commonly taught languages, follow-up
three-week immersion practicums at our affiliated institutions in the
target countries, and a semester or annual study abroad program at our
partner universities.

This summer we will offer introductory Albanian,
Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Macedonian, Armenian, and Tatar at the Arizona
State University main campus (Tempe, AZ), from June 2 to August 1, 2003,
with summer practicums in August and study abroad opportunities in the
academic year 2003/4.

[In the summer of 2004, we plan to offer intermediate level
Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian while at the same time adding Polish to the CLI
language offerings.]

CLI eight-credit-hour intensive courses come with a generous tuition
waiver which generates more than a thousand dollars in savings for each
enrolling CLI student. CLI students pay only a modest $300 application
fee. Both the length and content of our courses enable FLAS, Fulbright,
and other fellowships support funds to be used by graduate students
pursuing summer language training in the CLI. A limited number of
fellowships are available for Armenian and Tatar. We have simplified the
CLI application procedures. Just go to
http://www.asu.edu/clas/reesc/cli/onreg.htm and register.

As a regular feature of its summer session, the CLI also features
topical workshops and one-on-one tutorials for those preparing grant
proposals for study and research abroad. For dozens of CLI graduates,
these tutorials have yielded remarkable success in NSEP, Fulbright,
Marshall, and other fellowship competitions. Other CLI graduates have
now joined the U.S. Foreign Service or have taken international
positions with major corporations.

The following features make CLI summer programming competitive with the
finest national centers offering intensive summer language institutes:

 1.. Sound methodological background
 2.. Utilization of the state-of-the art instructional technology
 3.. Highly qualified language personnel
 4.. Rich cultural content
 5.. Rigorous and comprehensive oversight and quality control
 6.. Strong ties with institutions in target countries

We have been using the Interagency Linguistic Roundtable scale with our
introductory courses bringing CLI participants to level 1+ in reading
with other skills remaining between 1 and 1+ and our intermediate
courses reaching level 2 in reading with other skills remaining between
1+ and 2.

Our Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian course features a strong on-line component
(http://www.public.asu.edu/~dsipka/syl1.htm), and its entirely on-line
version will be made available to our students as a refresher intended
to alleviate the problem of retention in the period between the 
introductory and the intermediate course. A sample lesson one can be
perused at: http://www.asu.edu/clas/reesc/scr101, using the password
'scr1'. The full course is available at http://cli.la.asu.edu/scr101 -
student's social security number is required to log in. All CLI courses
will follow suit shortly and we will keep adding new hybrid components
for our courses through our server services page: http://cli.la.asu.edu.

CLI faculty are drawn from highly qualified linguists with years of
teaching experience and a strong record of publications in the field
(see http://www.public.asu.edu/~dsipka as an example). Short information
about our instructors and their syllabi are available at:
http://www.asu.edu/clas/reesc/cli/ltrain.htm.

In addition to the cultural content (complementing traditional grammar,
vocabulary, communicative skills, and linguistic norms) of CLI courses,
CLI summer sessions include the annual lecture series, movie showings,
and social events rich in cultural content. Take a look at some pictures
of our classes and social events (visiting ethnic restaurants) at:
http://www.public.asu.edu/~dsipka/sylpct.htm.

Finally, we have established partnerships with key institutions in
target countries securing the most favorable summer practicum and study
abroad arrangements for our students.

If you have any further questions about our courses, please do not
hesitate to contact us at cliasu.edu or by phone at 480-965-7706.

Sincerely,

Danko Sipka, Associate Director

Critical Languages Institute

http://www.public.asu.edu/~dsipka