!!!Meeting on Sámi Synthetic speech

* Time: 080822
* Participants: __Patrik Bye, Trond Trosterud, Martti Vainio__


!!!Presentation, background

Who are we and what do we do:

* hki 
* divvun
* giellatekno
* patrik + intonation

!!Patrik

* segmental phon, noticed that no work on Sámi intonation done.
* 3-4 yrs project (meeting in September)
* Kickoff on basic empirical work in May
* Get hold of radio material, pedagogical tapes
  just to see what intonational phenomena we have
* use the first year of the project for such things

* Two paid positions: Patrik + a phD.
* Applied to NFR to maybe get a third position as well.
* Autosegmental, metrical phonology, ToBi for Sámi
* Primarily North, also Lule and perhaps South.

!!Martti

* Done work on Finnish, Sámi would probably be closer to Finnsih
* ToBi for Finnish?
  Martti: Not very fruitful for Finnish, we do not have those types
  of intonational structures.
* We have one type of accent
* Important: Detaching form from function.
* Synthesis framework: Statistical intonation model.
* We leave it to the system to determine the contours.
* The system should learn the functions.

Collaborating?
* Patrik from Martti's synthesis?
* Martti from Patrik's phon analysis?

We would probably get information from each other, but we
are primarily interested in your raw data (for synthesis).

Technically: Hki needs a good signal:
Recordings under laboratory conditions.
We have been using "the red books" (audio books for the blind)

We have rule-based accentuation:
The words are marked up according to their prominence
* 0 - copulas, function words
* 1 - verbs
* 2 - nouns, adjectives
* 3 - emphasis, like in narrow focus

No question intonation in Finnish.

* what about focus-triggering clitics? -- yes, utilized
* do you base yourself upon a syntactic analysis?) -- yes
* In addition, there is an analysis of the information structure (given - new)

!!Trond

We have the syntactic analysis + a forthcoming dependency analysis

* xerox two-level morphology + lexc 
* vislcg3 disambiguation and dependency

{{{
"<Mu>"
	"mun" Pron Pers Sg1 Gen @>P #1->2 
"<birra>"
	"birra" Po @ADVL #2->0   <========== #2->(5/4)
"<son>"
	"son" Pron Pers Sg3 Nom @SUBJ> #3->4 
"<lea>"
	"leat" <aux> V IV Ind Prs Sg3 @FS-STA #4->0 
"<hupman>"
	"hupmat" <mv> V TV PrfPrc @ICL-AUX< #5->4 
"<.>"
	"." CLB #6->0 

"<Munge>"
	"mun" Pron Pers Sg1 Nom Foc/ge @SUBJ> #1->2 
"<lean>"
	"leat" <aux> V IV Ind Prs Sg1 @FS-STA #2->0 
"<boahtán>"
	"boahtit" <mv> V IV PrfPrc @ICL-AUX< #3->2 
"<.>"
	"." CLB #4->0 
}}}


!!!Material

Radio news would be good, and studio programs.

!!!Documents and background info

* Former application on tts project (Trond/Martti/Antti)
* Application/description of intonation project (Patrik)
* Report on Sámi tts to the Sámi Parliament (Sjur Moshagen 2003)
* Governmental whitepaper 2008 requiring Sámi tts (paragraph "Talesyntese" here):
[http://www.regjeringen.no/nn/dep/kkd/Dokument/Proposisjonar-og-meldingar/Stortingsmeldingar/2007-2008/stmeld-nr-35-2007-2008-/10/2/3.html?id=520174]


!!!Forthcoming milestones

Meeting between Divvun and the Sámi parliament in october

Upcoming deadlines?

!!!Work planning, division of labour

Autumn 08:

* Exchange papers and background documents. 
* Look for upcoming grant proposal deadlines
** Norway... 
** Finland.. Martti to have a look
* Would it be possible to make a Sámi-as-Finnish before october?
  Let us try:
** identify the Finnish text input format (Martti)
** make the same for Sámi (Patrik, Trond)
*** syllabify the Sámi text
*** turn the result into "Finnish orthography"
** Feed the result to the finnish tts and lean back.  


Spring 09 and onwards:
* Discuss formats for and evt. exchange empirical material


!!!Resources

!!Needed

TODO: 
* not a diphone system, but an hmm-based system. 
* One man-year for Sámi segmental tts. ==> suggest 3 years (which includes
* getting to know the system and making the usual mistakes and false starts)

Find out how much to make tts 

!!Available

* Martti: Finnish Academy researcher
* Antti: Funding for him until next summer
* Some grant proposals: ...
* Evt. hiring new persons for working on Sámi.


Q: Is it possible to integrate with standard OS's (Win/Mac) and common end-user applications (dyslectic, proofreading, screenreaders, etc.)?

The answer is yes. Web-based is easy. Integrating in mobile phones or text 
processors is a different thing but it is possible (done by commercal companies,
like e.g. Bitlips).


!!!Next meeting

Within a month.

Before that: the SPE rules and the Finnish example.