CS4706: Spoken Language Processing, Spring 2008
Time: Mon/Wed 2:40-3:55
Place: 1127 Mudd
Professor Julia Hirschberg (Office Hours Mon 4:00-6:00)
julia@cs.columbia.edu, 212-939-7114
Teaching Assistant Fadi Biadsy (Office Hours Wed 12:00-2:00)
fadi@cs.columbia.edu, 212-939-7111/7147
Announcements | Academic Integrity | Description
Readings | Resources | Requirements | Syllabus
Description
This course introduces students to research in spoken language in computational linguistics, aka natural language processing (NLP). We will study the different `meanings' that can be conveyed by the way that speakers produce sentences, techniques for analyzing spoken language, methods of developing speech technologies, and applications of such technologies in the real world, such as text-to-speech systems, speech recognizers, spoken dialogue systems, and detectors for various types of emotional speech. NB: This course can be counted as a PhD elective in Advanced AI . It is a requirement for the MS NLP Track. There are no official prerequisites for this course except Data Structures or equivalent, and no prior knowledge of NLP will be assumed.
Requirements
Four homework assignments, a midterm and a final exam. Each student in the course is allowed a total of 4 late days on homeworks with no questions asked; after that, 10% per late day will be deducted from the homework grade, unless you have a note from your doctor. Do not use these up early! Save them for real emergencies.
All students are required to have a Computer Science Account for this class. To sign up for one, go to the CRF website and then click on "Apply for an Account".
Homework submission procedure.
Academic Integrity
Copying or paraphrasing someone's work (code included), or permitting your own work to be copied or paraphrased, even if only in part, is not allowed, and will result in an automatic grade of 0 for the entire assignment or exam in which the copying or paraphrasing was done. Your grade should reflect your own work. If you believe you are going to have trouble completing an assignment, please talk to the instructor or TA in advance of the due date.
Readings
Required readings: Chapters from the second edition of Speech and Language Processing by Jurafsky and Martin available in draft form as a reader from the Village Copier on Amsterdam & 119th Street. Recommended readings: Acoustic & Auditory Phonetics by Keith Johnson (Chapter 1 is available on line) and all other readings marked by ‘*’.
Course Requirements
Midterm and final; N lab homeworks. The Speech Lab is available for use in homeworks on a signup basis.
Grading:
60% Homeworks
20% Midterm Exam
20% Final Exam
Late Policy
Each student starts the semester with 5 late days. Students use up late days when they turn in homework anytime after the due date and time. For example, if homework is due at 2:40 pm on Wednesday, anything turned in after 2:40 pm on Wednesday, but before 2:40 pm on Thursday uses up one late day. Once the ‘free’ late days are exhausted, homework submitted after the due date will be penalized @10% per late day (e.g. 3 days late, grade will be penalized by 30%).
Late days can be used for all homeworks.
(Note: Weekdays and weekends all count equally in the late day calculation.)
Academic Integrity
Copying or paraphrasing someone's work (code included), or permitting your own work to be copied or paraphrased, even if only in part, is not allowed, and will result in an automatic grade of 0 for the entire assignment or exam in which the copying or paraphrasing was done. Your grade should reflect your own work. If you believe you are going to have trouble completing an assignment, please talk to the professor in advance of the due date.
Announcements
See some cool Praat manipulations below under Feb 4.
Resources
- Praat - Praat resources
- Wavesurfer
- Help using ToBI - ToBI Annotation Environments
- Text-to-Speech Links and more...
- Text-to-Song synthesis
Syllabus
Julia Hirschberg
Professor, Computer Science
Columbia University
Department of Computer Science
1214 Amsterdam Avenue
M/C 0401
450 CS Building
New York, NY 10027
email: julia@cs.columbia.edu
phone: (212) 939-7114