Digital Commons Network^™

Linear Prediction: The Problem, Its Solution And Application To Speech, Alan O'Cinneide, David Dorran, Mikel Gainza

Conference papers

Linear prediction is a signal processing technique that is used extensively in the analysis of speech signals and, as it is so heavily referred to in speech processing literature, a certain level of familiarity with the topic is typically required by all speech processing engineers. This paper aims to provide a well-rounded introduction to linear prediction, and so doing, facilitate the understanding of the technique. Linear prediction and its mathematical derivation will be described, with a specific focus on applying the technique to speech signals. It is noted, however, that although progress in linear prediction has been driven primarily by …

Prototype Speech Corpus, Dermot Campbell, Yi Wang, Ciaran Mcdonnell

Conference papers

DIT’s prototype speech corpus allows language learners and researchers access to real, informal dialogues–not just the transcripts of dialogues. Because the dialogues were created at a very high acoustic level they are capable of being slowed down using a time-scaling tool for more detailed study of speech production. The recording methodology used produces a natural dialogue exhibiting all the features of native-to-native interchanges. The speech corpus is capable of serving the needs of students and researchers of spoken language. LinguaTag is the first prototype tool within the language work package in the FP6 EU project SALERO to automatically tag speech …

Task-Based Mood Induction Procedures For The Elicitation Of Natural Emotional Responses., Brian Vaughan, Charlie Cullen, Spyros Kousidis, Yi Wang

Other resources

This paper details experimental procedures designed to elicit real emotional responses from participants within a controlled acoustic environment. The experiments use Mood Induction Procedures (MIP’s), specifically MIP 4, to implement a co-operative task using two participants. These cooperative tasks are designed to engender emotional responses of activation and evaluation from the participants who are situated in separate isolation booths, thus reducing unwanted noise in the signal, preventing the participants from being distracted and ensuring a cleanly recorded audio signal. The audio is recorded at a professional level of quality (24bit/192Khz). The emotional dimensions of each audio recording will be evaluated …

Key Skills Framework: Enhancing Employability Within A Lifelong Learning Paradigm, Aidan Kenny, Ray English, Dave Kilmartin

Articles

Employability has become an area of interest among the general public and policy makers alike, with an increasing number of reports in the general media regarding the need for workers in certain sectors to up-skill due to the possible threat of job ‘displacement’. In addition, there has been an increase in education and training policy documents emphasising that citizens should pursue Lifelong Learning /Life Wide Learning to address the increased job-related uncertainty attributed to the globalisation process and the concomitant competitive threats. Academics such as Barnett (2005) claim that we are living in an era of ‘super complexity' and rapid …

Ditcall-Slow: Slowing Native Speech For Language Learners, Dermot Campbell, Ciaran Mcdonnell, Yi Wang, Marty Meinardi, Bunny Richardson, Charles Pritchard

Conference papers

It is a common experience of many learners of a foreign language that native speakers (NSs) of that language speak too quickly for them to understand or imitate. Slowing down a segment of speech with older technology results in the familiar deepening of the voice as the pitch drops as well. The result is unpleasant and not particularly instructive. The DITCall-Slow tool slows recorded speech without tonal distortion, so that the learner has – literally – more time to hear what was said by the NS and, especially at slower playback speeds, can attend to the manner in which the …

Using The Technology Of The Confessional As An Analytical Resource: Four Analytical Stances Towards Research Interviews In Discourse Analysis, Brendan O'Rourke, Martyn Pitt

Articles

Among the various approaches that have developed from FOUCAULT's work is an Anglophone discourse analysis that has attempted to combine FOUCAULTian insights with the techniques of Conversation Analysis. An important current methodological issue in this discourse analytical approach is its theoretical preference for "naturally occurring" rather than research interview data. A FOUCAULTian perspective on the interview as a research instrument, questions the idea of "naturally-occurring discourse". The "technology of the confessional" operates, not only within research interviews, but permeates other interactions as well. Drawing on FOUCAULT does not dismiss the problems of the interview as research instrument rather it shows …

Centre For Early Childhood Development And Education’S Conference Proceedings, Vision Into Practice, Dublin Castle, Dublin, 8th – 10th February 2007, Pp 321-327., Geraldine French

Other resources

This background paper Children’s early learning and development, sets out the theory and research underpinning children’s early learning and development in the Framework for Early Learning. The paper essentially responds to the question - how should we envision and understand the child as a young learner? The paper begins by outlining the context for early childhood care and education in Ireland by referring to our economic and social climate, the increasingly multicultural nature of society and relevant legislation and policy. Drawing on centuries of research, the modern day view of the child is one of him/her being a competent learner, …

The Role Of Early Childhood Care And Education: An Anti-Poverty Perspective, Noirin Hayes

Reports

No abstract provided.

The Need For A Speech Corpus, Dermot Campbell, Ciaran Mcdonnell, Marty Meinardi, Bunny Richardson

Articles

This paper outlines the ongoing construction of a speech corpus for use by applied linguists and advanced EFL/ESL students. The first section establishes the need for improvements in the teaching of listening skills and pronunciation practice for EFL/ESL students. It argues for the need to use authentic native-to-native speech in the teaching/learning process so as to promote social inclusion and contextualises this within the literature, based mainly on the work of Swan, Brown and McCarthy. The second part addresses features of native speech flow which cause difficulties for EFL/ESL students (Brown, Cauldwell) and establishes the need for improvements in the …

Social And Cultural Change In Ireland As Seen In Roddy Doyle's Paula Spencer Novels, Eamon Maher

Books/Chapters

No abstract provided.

Apotheosis Or Apparition? Bombay And The Village In 1990s Women’S Cinema, Rashmi Sawhney

Books/Book chapters

This article examines the representation of Bombay in Aruna Raje’s Rihaee (1988) and Sai Paranjpye’s Disha (1990). It has been argued here that in both films, Bombay functions as a narrative anchor to the fictive village, which is depicted as the locus of Indian modernity. Symbolism of the village-city trope is used to reorganise the syntagm of modernity-location-gender in new relations of power and also to present alternative visions of national development within the socio-economic context of 1990s liberalisation in India. The dialectic between city and village in these films emphasises the role of memory and migration in women’s cinema, …

Assessing The Writing Of International Learners: A Discussion In Two Voices, Sue Norton, Marty Meinardi

Articles

No abstract provided.

Passport To Trade: Connecting Europe’S Smes From East To West?, Amanda Ratcliffe, Thomas Cooney

Conference proceedings

: An EFER report in 1995observed that little of the growth of Europe’s top 500 companies came from existing products in existing markets, but almost two-thirds of the growth came from entering new markets [1]. A large majority of Europe’s 500 are active in export markets, with exports accounting for 40% of their turnover as opposed to the 10% export share for SMEs overall. One of the critical reasons for the poor performance of SMEs within the international arena is their ignorance of local business cultures. This paper is based upon the work of an EU initiative with the project …

The Transition From Preschool To School For Children In Ireland: Teachers Views, Mary O'Kane

Articles

There is a wealth of international research on the transition from preschool to school from a range of perspectives. Following on from such research, the issue of transition is emerging as an important new construct in early childhood care and education (ECCE), with a transition-to-school framework replacing the construct of school readiness as a focus of research interest. There has been limited research into transition practices in Ireland and this study is the first comprehensive research looking at this area from an Irish perspective1. Phase I of this study involved conducting a questionnaire on the transition from preschool to formal …

Play And Technology For Children Aged 4-12, Stella Downey, Noirin Hayes, Brian O'Neill

Reports

Research study commissioned by the Office of the Minister for Children, Government of Ireland, 2007.

Content Analysis Of Computer Conferencing Transcripts, Roisin Donnelly

Papers, presentations and other resources

As conferencing tools become an increasingly common feature in students’ experience, tutors need to have an understanding of how these tools facilitate the formation and maintenance of collaborative learning communities. Inevitably the pursuit of this understanding requires some form of analysis of the interactions involved. This analysis of the written transcripts, created by students during computer mediated conferencing (CMC), invariably takes the form of a systematic content analysis. For small-scale work the analysis can be undertaken manually but when the volume is large, as might arise from courses delivered wholly online or in a blended learning approach for example, some …

The International Protean Career: Four Women’S Narratives, Marian Crowley-Henry, David Weir

Articles

In this paper, we share individual narratives outlining the experiences of four well-educated western women following a permanent international career in the South of France. By virtue of detailed interview transcripts and contextual information regarding the specificity of the location in question, a comprehensive picture of the experiences and choices of individual women in leadership business positions on an international level is painted. Our aim is not to generalise the findings to a wider population, but to gain an insight into the depth and complexity of career issues for women in general, and particularly for women working in a foreign …

Key Skills Framework: Enhancing Employability Within A Lifelong Learning Paradigm, Aidan Kenny, Ray English, Dave Kilmartin

Level 3

Employability (see note 1) has become an area of interest among the general public and policy makers alike, with an increasing number of reports in the general media regarding the need for workers in certain sectors to up-skill due to the possible threat of job ‘displacement’. In addition, there has been an increase in education and training policy documents emphasising that citizens should pursue Lifelong Learning (see note 2) /Life Wide Learning to address the increased job-related uncertainty attributed to the globalisation process and the concomitant competitive threats. Academics such as Barnett (2005) claim that we …

Mediating Between Qualitative And Quantitative Representations For Task-Orientated Human-Robot Interaction., Michael Brenner, John D. Kelleher, Nick Hawes, Jeremy Wyatt

Conference papers

In human-robot interaction (HRI) it is essential that the robot interprets and reacts to a human’s utterances in a manner that reflects their intended meaning. In this paper we present a collection of novel techniques that allow a robot to interpret and execute spoken commands describing manipulation goals involving qualitative spatial constraints (e.g. “put the red ball near the blue cube”). The resulting implemented system integrates computer vision, potential field models of spatial relationships, and action planning to mediate between the continuous real world, and discrete, qualitative representations used for symbolic reasoning.

Frequency Based Incremental Attribute Selection For Gre., John D. Kelleher

Conference papers

The DIT system uses an incremental greedy search to generate descriptions, similar to the incremental algorithm described in (Dale and Reiter, 1995). The selection of the next attribute to be tested for inclusion in the description is ordered by the absolute frequency of each attribute in the training corpus. Attributes are selected in descending order of frequency (i.e. the attribute that occurred most frequently in the training corpus is selected first). Where two or more attributes have the same frequency of occurrence the first attribute found with that frequency is selected. The type attribute is always included in the description. …

Proceedings Of The 4th Acl-Sigsem Workshop On Prepositions At Acl-2007., Fintan Costello, John D. Kelleher, Martin Volk

Conference papers

This volume contains the papers presented at the Fourth ACL-SIGSEM Workshop on Prepositions. This workshop is endorsed by the ACL Special Interest Group on Semantics (ACL-SIGSEM), and is hosted in conjunction with ACL 2007, taking place on 28th June, 2007 in Prague, the Czech Republic.

From Certificates To Doctorates, By Degrees: Dublin Institute Of Technology - A Photographic Memoir, Jimmie Robinson

Books

Jimmie Robinson has photographed visitors and events at Dublin Institute of Technology for 43 years. In this photographic memoir, he chronicles the development of DIT over its first 120 years from behind the lens.

Does Understanding National Business Cultures Help Build Regional Development?, Amanda Ratcliffe, Thomas Cooney Dr.

Conference proceedings

An EFER report in 1995 observed that little of the growth ofEurope’s top 500 companies came from existing products in existing markets, but almost two-thirds of the growth came from entering new markets. A large majority of Europe’s 500 are active in export markets, with exports accounting for 40% of their turnover as opposed to the 10% export share for SMEs overall. One of the critical reasons for the poor performance of SMEs within the international arena is their ignorance of local business cultures. Yet for a country – or a specific region – to achieve strong economic growth, it …

Student Non-Attendence In Higher Education: A Phenomenon Of Student Apathy Or Poor Pedagogy, Joanne Cleary-Holdforth

Level 3

Non-attendance at university seems to be an on-going problem that appears to transcend country, university and discipline. One need only consult the literature on this subject to appreciate the magnitude of this phenomenon (Gump 2006; McCarey et al. 2006; Sharma et al. 2005; Nicholl and Timmins 2005; Hughes 2005; Hunter and Tetley 1999; Longhurst 1999). It is a phenomenon that is both intriguing and frustrating and yet there is very little evidence of university or governmental policy on it. It is generally accepted that university is a rite of passage for its students and is, therefore, as much about a …

The Irish Working Group On Information Literacy: A Cross-Sectoral Approach, Philip Russell, Terry O'Brien

Support services (Former ITT) - Articles

The Working Group on Information Literacy (WGIL) was established by the Library Association of Ireland (LAI) in January 2006 to recommend strategies for the development of information skills at both a theoretical and practical level in the Library and Information Services sector in Ireland.

From the outset, one of the key objectives established was that the work of the WGIL would be approached on a cross-sectoral basis.

Membership of the group comprises ten members from across the range of LIS (Library and Information Services) sectors in Ireland. These include academic, special, schools, public, health and university sectors, and also a …

Shared And Mutual Knowledge In Language Learning, Marty Meinardi

Articles

This article discusses the matter of shared knowledge from the perspective of the different deictic centres of understanding. Difficulties, which may result from a possible lack of a shared knowledge between NSs and NNSs due to differences in language experiences and personal backgrounds, are identified.

A Brief Introduction To Speech Synthesis And Voice Modification, Alan O'Cinneide, David Dorran, Mikel Gainza

Conference papers

For both engineers and linguists, the computer synthesis of natural speech is an objective that would provide many useful applications to human-computer interaction, including the realm of electro-acoustic music. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the area of speech synthesis by providing an overview of the three main methods of computer speech synthesis; namely concatenative, articulatory and formant syntheses. Some aspects of the current state of the technology are illuminated and the final section will explain the author’s motivation and current research approach to the field of voice modification.

Economic, Environmental And Social Performance Of The Irish Tourism Sector: Towards Sustainability, Kevin Griffin, John Carty

Conference papers

Ireland is promoted a clean, green tourism destination, famous for it’s landscape, environment, natural habitats and biodiversity. However, is this image still realistic and is it an image that can be sustained as Ireland develops post 2006? This question is examined through the course of this paper and relevant tourism policies are drawn on to illustrate this issue further.

Over the past decade, Irish tourism has performed quite well and has made a strong contribution to the national economy[1]. An efficient government sector, a competitive air and maritime transport sector, a strong partnership between public and private sector, …

Exploring The Discourses Of Small Enterprise Proprietors, Brendan O'Rourke, Martyn Pitt

Conference papers

Over the last three decades the discourses of strategy and enterprise have developed significantly in the context of large corporate organizations and increasingly within and for the public sector. The discourses of strategy and enterprise have developed in relationship with each other and are generative of various attributes and dilemmas for the identity of the strategist/entrepreneur. This study looks at how these important discourses are deployed by small enterprise proprietors in periodical publishing in Ireland as they construct their business identities with one of the authors. Interview data from one proprietor is subjected to a discourse analysis drawing particularly on …

Dit Speech Corpus, Dermot Campbell, Yi Wang, John D. Kelleher, Marty Meinardi, Bunny Richardson

Conference papers

DIT’s nascent speech corpus will allow a body of spoken material to be searched for features of informal native speech via a normalised transcription. Once located, the original sound files can be played at normal speed or slowed down in order to better study the recorded speech. The DIT speech corpus treats speed of delivery as a key element in producing the elisions, assimilation, reductions and co-articulations characteristic of native-to-native dialogues. Lack of training in dealing with this spoken register can lead to lack of preparation for the world of real speech and even to a degree of social exclusion. …