TAL Journal: Special issue: review articles

http://tal-63-3.sciencesconf.org/ (page soon available)


2022 Volume 63 Number 3

Deadline for submission: 01/07/2022

Editors: Cécile Fabre, Emmanuel Morin, Sophie Rosset and Pascale Sébillot


FOCUS OF THE ISSUE:

This special issue of the journal TAL invites articles that summarize the current state of knowledge in one of the fields of natural language processing.

The article will discuss research made in the chosen field and will present how it has evolved to the most recent advances. The synthesis must be rigorous, clear and accessible to readers of the journal TAL who are not specialists in the subject of the article. It should provide a perspective on the work presented, allowing the reader to understand the relation between the various lines of research.

The topics covered are those usually targeted by the varia issues of the journal, i.e. all aspects of natural processing of written, spoken and signed languages and of computational linguistics. The theme of the article may be identified within the following fields (non-exhaustive list):

- Computational models of language, statistical learning and modeling
- Lexical and terminological resources
- Linguistic tools (tokenization, tagging, parsing, etc.)
- Intermodality and multimodality
- Language multiplicity and diversity, multilingual processing, translation
- Semantics, discourse, pragmatics, comprehension
- Information access and text mining
- Text generation and synthesis
- Speech or sign language recognition/synthesis
- Dialogue
- Evaluation
- Explicability and reproducibility
- NLP in interaction with other disciplines (e.g. digital humanities)
- NLP and ethics

Note the date of intention to submit (calendar below): the authors will have to submit an abstract of the chosen theme. This phase is important for the selection of external reviewers specialized in the subject matter.


LANGUAGE


Articles are written in English or French. Submissions in English are
accepted only if one of the co-authors is not French speaking.


THE JOURNAL


TAL (Traitement Automatique des Langues / Natural Language Processing)
(http://www.atala.org/revuetal) is an international journal published
by ATALA (French Association for Natural Language Processing) since 1960, with the support of the national centre for scientific research (CNRS). It is published in electronic format, with immediate free access to published articles.


IMPORTANT DATES (PROVISIONAL)

First call: March 2022

Intent to submit (abstract presenting the theme): April 29, 2022

Deadline for submission: July 1, 2022

Notification to authors after first review: end of September 2022

Notification to authors after second review: end of Dec 2022

Publication: February 2023


SUBMISSION FORMAT


The length of the papers must be between 20 and 25 pages.


The TAL journal has a double-blind review process. It is necessary to anonymize the article, the name of the file, and to avoid
self-references.


Style sheets are available on the journal's website
(_https://www.atala.org/content/instruction-authors-style-files-0_).


Authors are invited to submit their paper by clicking on the menu 'Paper submission' (PDF
article' menu (PDF format). To do so, you will need to have an account on the sciencesconf platform (http://www.sciencesconf.org). Click on 'create account' next to the
'Connect' button at the top of the page. To submit, come back to the
page (soon available) http://tal-63-3.sciencesconf.org/, connect to you
account and upload your submission.

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

Each article is evaluated by three reviewers, two external reviewers and a member of the editorial board of the journal TAL. The list of the members of the editorial board of the journal is available at http://www.atala.org/content/comit%C3%A9-de-r%C3%A9daction-0

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The speaker's mask: a transdisciplinary interrogator of the complexity of speech Call for papers At the time of this call, the current health crisis still requires the world population to wear face masks designed to protect each individual from droplets and aerosols received or projected during breathing, speaking or singing. Several publications attest to the effectiveness of approved masks in this protection, which varies according to the material of the equipment and its duration of use. However, the study of these devices is also a matter for the human sciences. In particular, the language sciences are not left out in the study of the effects of the mask on the wearer's ability to be heard (Giovanelli et al. 2021) and intelligible (Palmiero et al. 2016), regardless of the communication situation or speech style (Cohn et al. 2021). Speech acoustics (Magee et al. 2020), phonetics, discourse analysis (Onipede 2021), modeling, recognition (Kodali et al. 2021), and psycholinguistics can, for example, be convened by such research regarding a current universal everyday concern. Although several publications have recently appeared in this field, many ways remain to be explored for this transdisciplinary subject. In this volume, we propose to pursue the reflection ay least through the following thematic reflections:

• Speech perception: How does hiding the lower part of the face alter the receiver’s perception of the message produced by the emitter, and how does the latter adapt to this communicational change?

• Spoken articulation: How does the articulatory discomfort experienced by the masked speaker alter the management of speech production? Does it depend on the segmental and prosodic composition of the speech, on the speaking style or on the communication situation, or even on the representation that the speaker makes of the discomfort caused by the mask to his/her interlocutor?

• Voice: What are the effects of wearing a mask on the produced, perceived and felt timbre of the spoken, declaimed or sung voice, in an ecological situation (artistic for example, or in a training context)?

 Call for papers – Langue(s) & Parole, n°7, 2022 : le masque du locuteur 4

• Modeling and recognition of speech: What modeling and recognition of a 'masked speech signal' are possible? • Transmission of speech: What are the issues in terms of acquisition and education related to wearing a face mask? (Early childhood, schooling, native and foreign languages, teaching, etc.)

• Discourse analysis: What are the discourses produced in terms of behavior and reaction, emotions and affects, feelings and proprioception, nonverbal communication and aesthetics as a result of wearing the mask? Does wearing the mask (and subsequently dropping it) have any impact (positive or negative) on the speaker's self-esteem and confidence in front of a group?

• Clinical phonetics and linguistics: What links can exist between pathologies of the areas covered by the mask and its use? Can the use of the mask cause significant alterations? What are the adaptations to be made when wearing the mask with respect to voice, speech or communication pathologies? Is wearing a mask linked to an increase in vocal fatigue in speakers who have to practice a profession that requires oral expression in front of a large audience?

• Engineering: How can knowledge of the effects of the mask on spoken communication be useful to designers of new devices that are better suited to the communication situation and/or the particularities of the target speakers? In this respect, this volume aims to bring together current research on the issues and effects of wearing a mask as they can be studied from the point of view of the various components of the language sciences (linguistics, phonetics, psycholinguistics, clinical phonetics and linguistics, didactics, sociolinguistics) and their implementation in certain communication contexts (speech therapy, psychology, artistic disciplines, etc.). These reflections, in their theoretical aspect, will contribute to the systemic analyses of oral communication, by providing, for example, data to enlighten the mechanisms of compensation, reorganization of voice, speech or discourse to this multi-effect, external disrupter (Vaxelaire et al. 2007) of language and oral communication systems. The examples of themes proposed above aim, by their diversity, to have the reader perceive the width of the epistemological span targeted by this volume of contributions. Other topics may of course be considered, provided that the research questions involved do question the impact of wearing a mask on the functioning of language and thus contribute, in a transdisciplinary approach, to develop knowledge about the latter. From an application point of view, it is hoped that the contributions collected can contribute to optimizing strategies to overcome the disturbances resulting from wearing the mask.

Coordinators Claire Pillot-Loiseau, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France Bernard Harmegnies, Université de Mons, Mons, Belgique

Languages of publication: French, English

Author guidelines : https://revistes.uab.cat/languesparole/languesparole/languesparole/about/submissions

Timeline: May 30, 2022: deadline for submission of article proposals to be sent to: r.langues.parole@uab.cat, claire.pillot@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr, Bernard.HARMEGNIES@umons.ac.be

End of 2022: print and online publication of the issue Appel à contributions – Call for papers – Langue(s) & Parole, n°7, 2022 : le masque du locuteur 5

References Cohn, M., Pycha, A., & Zellou, G. (2021). Intelligibility of face-masked speech depends on speaking style: Comparing casual, clear, and emotional speech. Cognition, 210, 1-5, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104570 Giovanelli, E., Valzolgher, C., Gessa, E., Todeschini, M., & Pavani, F. (2021). Unmasking the Difficulty of Listening to Talkers With Masks: lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. i-Perception, 12(2), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 2041669521998393 Kodali, R. K., & Dhanekula, R. (2021). Face Mask Detection Using Deep Learning. In 2021 International Conference on Computer Communication and Informatics (ICCCI) (pp. 1-5). IEEE. Magee, M., Lewis, C., Noffs, G., Reece, H., Chan, J. C., Zaga, C. J., ... & Vogel, A. P. (2020). Effects of face masks on acoustic analysis and speech perception: Implications for peri-pandemic protocols. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 148(6), 3562-3568. Onipede, F. M. (2021). Nigerians' Reactions towards COVID-19 Pandemic Health Precautions: A Pragma-Semiotic Analysis, International Review of Social Sciences Research, Volume 1, Issue 1, pp. 1- 24. Palmiero, A. J., Symons, D., Morgan III, J. W., & Shaffer, R. E. (2016). Speech intelligibility assessment of protective facemasks and air-purifying respirators. Journal of occupational and environmental hygiene, 13(12), 960-968. Vaxelaire, B., Sock, R., Kleiber, G., Marsac, F. (2007). Perturbations et Réajustements. Langue et langage, Publications de l'Université Marc Bloch - Strasbourg 2.

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Research Topic (thematic issue): Science, Technology and Art in the Spoken Expression of Meaning

Nonverbal language is a rich source of indexical and symbolic information in speech communication and a demanding field for scientific, technological, and artistic investigation. There is no speech communicative interaction in which pragmatic meanings are not conveyed either by voice quality, speech prosody or body gestures. Structuring prosodic information in its varied forms is the means the speaker uses to give a particular meaning to her/his saying. The study of prosody of speech produced by a human speaker or a machine in real-life situations for informing, for allowing a dialogue in the context of human-human or human-machine interactions, for entertaining, for communicating and for impressing the listener can pave the way to a better understanding of how prosody shapes speech production and perception in diverse domains such as technology, art, and scientific investigation.

The main goal of this research topic is to shed light on how vocal and
visual prosodic information varies across the most diverse situations of real
life to express meaning. Work on emotional prosody, on vocal aesthetics,
on the prosody expression of different attitudes in real-life situations,
including human-machine interaction and art and entertainment, is the
privileged kind of investigation we welcome in this research topic.

Particular themes may include, but are not limited to:

1. Prosodic meaning in spontaneous situations.
2. Indexical meaning in spoken communication.
3. Prosody of speaking, declamation and singing styles.
4. Voices and talking heads in TTS systems.
5. Voices in oral poetry and synesthetic kinds of art.
6. Voices in the entertainment industry, especially in animations.
7. Voices in the cinema, theatre, TV, radio, and other media performances.
8. Vocal and visual prosody in linguistic, paralinguistic, and extralinguistic
features.
9. Vocal stereotypes, sound symbolism, and voice aesthetics
10. Sonorities and their synesthetic perceptual effects.
11. Sonorities and their effect on wellbeing, mental health, and related
areas.
12. Sonorities in sensory landscapes.
13. Sonorities in animal communication.
14. Sonorities and cross modalities.

Submission Deadlines

Link to submission: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/38820/science-technology-and-art-in-the-spoken-expression-of-meaning

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