emunix.emich.edu>
Editor for this issue: Ljuba Veselinova <lveselinemunix.emich.edu>
pilot.msu.edu>SPANISH LINGUISTICS. Visiting Assistant Professor or Instructor for the 1996-1997 academic year. Ph.D. preferred. Candidates should have broad scholarly interests, demonstrable evidence of excellence in teaching and scholarship, and native or near-native competence in Spanish. Courses to be taught may include phonetics, grammar and composition, and Romance Linguistics, as well as elementary and intermediate Spanish. Expressions of interest, with a recent curriculum vitae and a placement dossier, should be sent to Professor Michael S. Koppisch, Chair, Department of Romance and Classical Languages, 256 Old Horticulture Building, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824-1112. Phone: (5l7) 355-8352. E-mail: KoppischMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
let.kun.nl>At the Dept. of Language & Speech of the University of Nijmegen there are two openings in the field of automatic speech recognition. The goal of these two Ph.D. projects is to model pronunciation variation in Dutch in order to improve the performance of automatic speech recognition in spoken dialogue systems (SDS's). General information At the Dept. of Language & Speech a team consisting of people with diverse backgrounds (a.o. linguistics, phonetics, cognitive science, mathematics, physics, electrical engineering, and informatics) works on various aspects of speech research. The candidates should fit within this team. A large part of the research carried out at our dept. concerns speech technology. At present, the two main research topics in this field are: [1] Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) for SDS's, and [2] Automatic Speaker Verification/Identification (ASV/I). Both candidates will be working on the first topic. A substantial part of the ASR research takes place within the Dutch Priority Programme Language and Speech Technology of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). The goal of this project is an SDS for public transport information. One of the candidates (called OIO) will work on this project and will be employed by NWO. The other candidate (called AIO) will receive his/her grant from the Dutch research school Center for Language Studies (CLS). About the research It is well-known that pronunciation variation is a serious problem for automatic speech recognition. The goal of these two Ph.D. projects is to model pronunciation variation in Dutch in order to improve the performance of spoken dialogue systems (SDS's). To achieve this goal, two approaches are usually followed: 'top-down' and 'bottom-up', where bottom stands for the speech signal and top for the word. The 'top-down' approach is more linguistic and will be followed by the AIO. In this approach phonological rules will be used for (semi-)automatic generation of pronunciation variants, which are subsequently matched to the signals. Therefore, the candidate should have a linguistic background (e.g. M.S. in a linguistic discipline), but should not be deterred by the technical details of automatic speech recognition. Optionally, the candidate may also have a technical background. However, in the latter case the candidate should be able to show a clear interest in linguistics. Furthermore, a good knowledge of Dutch is required. The other candidate will follow the more technical 'bottom-up' approach. Here, digital signal processing techniques such as clustering, state-tying, pattern-matching, and discriminant analysis will be used. Therefore, the candidate should have a technical background (i.e. M.S. in computer science, electrical engineering, or a related field), and preferably some interest in linguistics. A thorough knowledge of Dutch is not required. However, the candidate should be willing to learn (some) Dutch. The duration of both projects is 4 years. The approximate starting dates of the projects are Nov. 1996 for the OIO, and Jan. 1997 for the AIO. The two researchers will work together on the topic mentioned above. Desired qualifications for both candidates are knowledge of UNIX and speech recognition, and ability to write in English. If you are interested, you can contact Lou Boves or Helmer Strik. Prof. Dr. L. Boves tel. nr.: 31-24-3612902 e-mail: BovesMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue