Quest for the Essence of Language - Multi-Tier Theory of Spoken Language

Explore a multi-tier theory of spoken language in this 1-hour 9-minute lecture by Steven Greenberg at the Center for Language & Speech Processing, Johns Hopkins University. Delve into the concept that utterances are composed not only of words and phonemes, but also syllables, articulatory-acoustic features, and prosemes. Discover how this framework provides a more precise portrayal of pronunciation variation and phonetic micro-structure compared to conventional lexico-phonetic approaches. Learn about the potential applications of this model in automatic speech recognition and synthesis. Gain insights from Greenberg's extensive background in linguistics, neuroscience, psychoacoustics, and auditory physiology as he presents his research on the phonetic and prosodic properties of spontaneous spoken language. Understand the development of the Modulation Spectrogram for robust speech representation and syllable-centric classifiers of phonetic features for speech technology applications.