Subject: ESCApad #17 Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 18:40:13 +0100 From: Isabel Trancoso To: esca_list@speech.inesc.pt ============================================================================ ESCApad number 17 August 26, 1999 ============================================================================ Dear ESCA members, Welcome to ESCApad #17. This issue includes 4 short announcements and a reminder about EUROSPEECH'99. We're looking forward to meeting many of you at the conference site, in the beautiful city of Budapest. As in EUROSPEECH'97, in Rhodes, you will find an ESCA booth in the Exhibition Hall where you will be able to buy proceedings from previous conferences and ETRWs and ask information concerning ESCA. This year's conference will provide the stage for some potentially exciting changes to ESCA - opening up the Board to members from any country from around the world and changing our name, perhaps to the "International Speech Communication Association" - ISCA. These important matters will be decided at the General Assembly of the Association that will be held in the evening of Tuesday 7th September. All members are invited to attend and to contribute to this key event. Greetings from ESCA, Isabel Trancoso ============================================================================ ESCA has received a request for funding a treatment of a six year old child with auditory and visual processing and comprehension disabilities. Any information concerning this problem should be sent to John Gail at: JohnGail1280@email.msn.com If you have information about national organizations such as ASHA (American Speech Language Association - http://www.asha.org/) that can be added to the ESCA website, please send it to publicity@esca-speech.org. We would like to compile a list of associations that can be contacted in such cases. ============================================================================ CHRISTINE Corpus, Stage I Stage I of the CHRISTINE Corpus is now available. It comprises a structurally-annotated cross-section of spontaneous 1990s speech drawn from all UK regions, social classes, etc. The annotation scheme is that of the well-established SUSANNE Corpus, and is defined in detail in G.R. Sampson, _English for the Computer_, Clarendon Press (Oxford University Press), 1995. CHRISTINE/I is described in detail in its Documentation file, which is available on the Web at http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/geoffs/ChrisDoc.html (250 kb, about 35,000 words). Another Web page, http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/geoffs/RChristine.html, discusses the background and aims of the CHRISTINE Project. The Corpus can be downloaded by anonymous ftp. The URL is ftp://ftp.cogs.susx.ac.uk/pub/users/geoffs/CHRISTINE1.tar.Z -- use "uncompress" to uncompress the file, and then "tar -xf" to unpack the tar file into its 84 component files (which include a copy of the Documentation file). CHRISTINE/I includes about 40% of the eventual complete CHRISTINE Corpus. The complete Corpus is expected to be ready for distribution early in the year 2000. Prof. Geoffrey Sampson School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences University of Sussex Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, GB e-mail geoffs@cogs.susx.ac.uk ============================================================================ ASR Language Specialist Aculab is a leading provider of open standards-based components for the Computer Telephony industry. Based in Milton Keynes, UK, our products include the Prosody speech processing platform, running World-class speech recognition and synthesis algorithms. This post's primary function is to enhance Aculab's isolated and connected-word speech recognition capability, including the development of the models necessary to recognise additional languages. The successful applicant should be aware of key issues in language, speech processing, and statistics, but their main area of expertise will be in C/C++ programming. Organisational skills are also required, as the post will include the specification and procurement of speech databases to fill the needs of a number of concurrent projects. The post may be suitable for a recent graduate, provided they can demonstrate the required skills, but further relevant experience and/or education would be a definite advantage. http://www.aculab.com/ mailto:Steve.Beet@aculab.com ============================================================================= "Corpora and NLP" ACIDCA'2000 session Monastir (Tunisia), 22-24 March 2000 http://www.chez.com/acidca2000 "Corpora and NLP" is a 3-day thematic session and will be held as part of the International Conference on Artificial and Computational Intelligence for Control, Automation and Decision in Engineering and Industrial Systems (ACIDCA'2000). The session "Corpora and NLP" will be organised as a workshop with its own Proceedings and Programme Committee. The session will address all aspects of the use of written and spoken corpora (including the construction of corpora to be used) in NLP. Paper Submission Due: 1 October 1999 Notification of Acceptance : 10 December 1999 Camera-ready Paper Due : 10 January 1999 For any further information please contact: Lamia Belguith e-mail: l.belguith@fsegs.rnu.tn Fax: (216) 4 296 229 ============================================================================= All additional information at the ESCA web-site: http://www.esca-speech.org The ESCA secretariat can be contacted at: info@esca-speech.org Requests concerning membership, Speech Communication and ordering Proceedings should be forwarded to the Secretariat. For message distribution at esca_list contact: publicity@esca-speech.org =============================================================================