Workshop on Innovation and Applications in Speech Technology
(IAST), http://muster.ucd.ie/workshops/iast/

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The Listening Talker: an interdisciplinary workshop on natural and
synthetic modification of speech in response to listening conditions

Edinburgh, 2-3 May 2012

http://listening-talker.org/workshop

When talkers speak, they also listen. Talkers routinely adapt to their
interlocutors and environment, maintaining intelligibility and
dialogue fluidity in a way that promotes efficient exchange of
information. In contrast, current speech output technology is largely
deaf, incapable of adapting to the listener's context, inefficient in
use and lacking the naturalness that comes from rapid appreciation of
the speaker-listener environment.  A key scientific challenge is to
better understand how 'talker-listeners' respond to context and to
apply these findings to the modification of natural (live/recorded)
and generated (synthetic) speech. The ISCA-supported Listening Talker
(LISTA) workshop brings together linguists, psychologists,
neuroscientists, engineers and others working on human and machine
speech perception and production, to explore new approaches to
context-sensitive speech generation.

The workshop will be single-track, with invited talks and contributed
oral and poster presentations. An open call for a special issue of
Computer Speech and Language on the theme of the listening talker will
follow the workshop.

Contributions are invited on any aspect of the listening talker,
including but not limited to:

- theories and models of human communication involving the listening talker
- human speech production modifications induced by noise
- speech production changes with manipulated feedback
- algorithms/vocoders for speech modification
- transformations from casual to clear speech
- characterisation of the listening context
- intelligibility and quality metrics for modified speech
- application to natural dialogues, PA, teleconferencing

Invited speakers

 Torsten Dau  (Danish Technical University)
 Valerie Hazan  (University College, London)
 Richard Heusdens  (Technical University Delft)
 Hideki Kawahara  (Wakayama University)
 Roger Moore  (University of Sheffield)
 Martin Pickering  (University of Edinburgh)
 Peter Vary  (Aachen University)
 Junichi Yamagishi  (University of Edinburgh)

Important dates

 30th January 2012: Submission of 4-page papers
 27th February 2012: Notification of acceptance/rejection

Co-chairs

 Martin Cooke  (University of the Basque Country)
 Simon King  (University of Edinburgh)
 Bastiaan Kleijn  (Victoria University of Wellington)
 Yannis Stylianou  (University of Crete)

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The Third International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages (TAL 2012)

Nanjing, China, May 27-29, 2012

www.TAL2012.org

The Third International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages (TAL 2012) will be held in Nanjing, China during May 27-29, 2012. This will be a long-awaited event following TAL 2004 (Beijing, China) and TAL 2006 (La Rochelle, France). As a satellite meeting of Speech Prosody 2012 (to be held in Shanghai, China during May 22-25, 2012), TAL 2012 will be organized by Nanjing Normal University under the joint supports of the International Speech Communication Association (especially by SProSIG and SIG-CSLP), the International Phonetic Association, the Phonetic Association of China, the Chinese Information Processing Society of China, the Acoustical Society of China, and the Chinese Dialect Society.

The theme of TAL 2012 is ‘Tonal aspects across tone and non-tone languages.’ Following the heritage of the past two symposia, TAL 2012 will continue to focus on tone languages, covering studies of tones from phonetic, phonological, psychological, technological, and pathological points of view; but will also welcome studies on tonal aspects of non-tone languages and singing. In particular, this symposium emphasizes the relationship between phonology and phonetics of tones, the relationship between production and perception of tones, the modeling of tones, and the practical utilization of tonal information in spoken language processing. We will make it a great opportunity for linguists, phoneticians, psychologists, language educators, speech pathologists, and speech engineers from all over the world to get together to share and deepen our understanding of tones.

Nanjing, which literally means ‘South Capital,’ has a prominent status in China’s long history and glorious culture. It had been the capital of China during ten dynasties including early Ming Dynasty and the Republic of China. With its beautiful nature and a variety of traditional architectures and historical sights, Nanjing is one of China’s most attractive cities. The transportation to Nanjing is very convenient. There are direct international flights between Nanjing and some cities in Europe, USA and Asian countries. Also, it takes only about 80-90 minutes to travel by train between Nanjing and Shanghai, where the airline connections to almost all main cities in the world are available.

Prospective authors are invited to submit papers (up to 6 pages and written in English) on original research related to tonal aspects of languages, including but not limited to:

- Phonology and phonetics of tones

- Typology of tones and tone languages

- Tone production and perception

- Tone language acquisition and learning

- Evolution of tones and tone change

- Tone, accent, and intonation

- Tonal variation in continuous speech

- Modeling of tonal aspects of languages

- Speech processing for tone languages

- Tonal processing in speech recognition and synthesis

- Psychological and neural mechanisms of tones

- Pathology and therapy for tonal aspects of languages

- Speech corpus and annotation for tones

- Cross-linguistic study of tone languages and non-tone languages

- Tonal information in forensic phonetics

- Tone in singing and traditional operas

We are also calling for exhibits and financial supports. Donations from corporate, academic, government, and individual sponsors would be greatly appreciated. Your support brings you various benefits as stated in our website.

Important Dates

Special session proposal:            December 20, 2011

Submission of full papers:          February 15, 2012

Notification of acceptance:         March 15, 2012

Camera-ready paper due:           March 25, 2012

Early registration deadline:         March 31, 2012

General Chair: Wentao Gu (Professor, Nanjing Normal University, China)

Contact Email:            TAL2012nj@gmail.com

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Dans le cadre de sa politique d’ouverture internationale, et en
    continuité de l’action lancée lors des JEPs 2004 au Maroc,
    2006 à Dinard, 2008 à Avignon et 2010 à Mons, l’AFCP invite des
    étudiants ou jeunes chercheurs de la communauté
    « Communication Parlée » rattachés à des laboratoires situés hors de
    France, à participer à la conférence JEP 2012
    qui aura lieu conjointement avec TALN
    à Grenoble, France, les 4-8 juin 2012 :http://www.jeptaln2012.org/

    Cette aide correspond au financement par l'AFCP, des frais de
    transport, d’hébergement et d’inscription pour quelques
    (4 à 5) jeunes chercheurs venus de l’étranger ayant fait acte de
    candidature selon les modalités suivantes.

    Modalités de candidature :
    ======================

    Tout(e) candidat(e) devra constituer un dossier  (voir fiche jointe
     ou sur le site web AFCP http://www.afcp-parole.org/
)
    comportant :
    • un CV succinct
        - présentant les activités scientifiques du candidat ainsi que
    sa formation universitaire,
        - exposant ses motivations et mettant en valeur les retombées
    attendues d’une participation aux JEP 2012 (1 à 2 pages),
    • une estimation des frais de transport.

    Pour les étudiant(e)s, le dossier devra être accompagné d’une lettre
    de recommandation du directeur de recherche.

    Calendrier :
    ==========
    • Envoi du dossier par courrier électronique à Isabelle Ferrané et
    Loïc Barrault (isabelle.ferrane@irit.fr,loic.barrault@lium.univ-lemans.fr)
    avant le vendredi 17 février 2012
    • Décisions d’acceptation rendues pour le vendredi 2 mars 2012
    • 29ièmes Journées d’Etudes sur la Parole du 4 au 8 juin 2012.

    Remarques :
    ===========
    - La soumission et l’acceptation d’une contribution scientifique aux
    JEPs n’est pas un critère de sélection pour cette invitation
    - Priorité sera donnée aux candidat(e)s venant de pays peu
    représentés aux JEP
    - Pour votre estimation de frais de transport, vous pouvez consulter
    la page du site des JEP 2012 consacrée aux informations pratiques :
    aéroports et liaisons ferroviaires (http://www.jeptaln2012.org/?page_id=77)
    - Un hébergement proche du lieu de la conférence sera proposé aux
    jeunes chercheurs invités.
    - Attention aux délais nécessaires pour l'obtention des visas.

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CALL FOR PAPERS
SIGDIAL 2012 CONFERENCE:  13th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest
Group on Discourse and Dialog
Seoul, South Korea
July 5-6, 2012

Deadline for submissions:  March 26, 2012 GMT-11

CALL FOR PAPERS

The SIGDIAL venue provides a regular forum for the presentation of
cutting edge research in discourse and dialog to both academic and
industry researchers. Continuing a series of twelve successful
previous meetings, this conference spans the research interest areas
of discourse and dialog. The conference is sponsored by the SIGDIAL
organization (http://www.sigdial.org/), which serves as the Special
Interest Group on discourse and dialog for both ACL and ISCA.

Topics of Interest

We welcome formal, corpus-based, implementation or analytical work on
discourse and dialog including but not restricted to the following
themes and topics:

1. Discourse Processing and Dialog Systems
2. Corpora, Tools and Methodology
3. Pragmatic and/or Semantic Modeling
4. Dimensions of Interaction
5. Applications of Dialog and Discourse Processing Technology

For a detailed list of topics of interest, see
http://nlp.postech.ac.kr/sigdial2012/topics.htm.

Special Theme

Coherence, whether understood as 'general overall interrelatedness' or
'continuity in meaning and context' (Louwerse and Graesser, 2005) is a
topic that spans research on discourse and on dialog and has strong
connections to research on coreference, discourse structure,
dialog/task modeling, natural language generation, etc.  The special
theme for SIGDIAL 2012 is 'characterizing dialog coherence', where
dialog includes multi-party interaction.  We welcome theoretical,
analytical, computational or interdisciplinary submissions on this
topic.

SUBMISSIONS

The program committee welcomes the submission of long papers, short
papers, and demo descriptions. All accepted submissions will be
published in the conference proceedings.
    * Long papers will be presented in full plenary presentations.
They must be no longer than 8 pages, including title, content, and
examples. Two additional pages are allowed for references and
appendices which may include extended example discourses or dialogs,
algorithms, graphical representations, etc.
    * Short papers will be featured in short plenary presentations,
followed by posters. They should be no longer than 4 pages.  One
additional page is allowed for references and appendices.
    * Demonstrations will be presented in special sessions, separate
from short paper presentations and poster sessions. Demo descriptions
will appear in a dedicated section of the proceedings and should be no
longer than 3 pages, inclusive of references. To encourage late
breaking demos, demo submissions have a later deadline.

Papers that have been or will be submitted to other meetings or
publications must provide this information (see submission format).
SIGDIAL 2012 cannot accept for publication or presentation work that
will be (or has been) published elsewhere, except for demonstrations.
Any questions regarding submissions can be sent to the technical
program co-chairs at program-chairs[at]sigdial.org.

Authors are encouraged to submit additional supportive material such
as video clips or sound clips and examples of available resources for
review purposes.

Submission is electronic using paper submission software at:
https://www.softconf.com/c/sigdial2012/

FORMAT

All long, short, and demo submissions should follow the two-column
ACL-HLT 2012 format. We strongly recommend the use of ACL LaTeX style
files or Microsoft Word style files tailored for ACL-HLT 2012
conference. Submissions must conform to the official ACL-HLT 2012
style guidelines (http://www.acl2012.org/call/sub01.asp), and they
must be electronic in PDF. As in most previous years, submissions will
not be anonymous.

MENTORING SERVICE

The mentoring service offered last year has been very beneficial. We
will follow the same practice this year. Submissions with innovative
core ideas that may need language (English) or organizational
assistance will be flagged for 'mentoring' and conditionally accepted
with recommendation to revise with a mentor. An experienced mentor who
has previously published in the SIGDIAL venue will then help the
authors of these flagged papers prepare their submissions for
publication. Any questions about the mentoring service can be
addressed to the mentoring service chair, Dr. Kallirroi Georgila, at
kgeorgila[at]ict.usc.edu.

BEST PAPER AWARDS

In order to recognize significant advancements in dialog and discourse
science and technology, SIGDIAL will recognize two best paper awards.
A selection committee consisting of prominent researchers in the
fields of interest will select the recipients of the awards.

SPONSORSHIP

SIGDIAL also offers a number of opportunities for sponsors. For more
information, email Jason Williams, Sponsorship Chair, at
jdw[at]research.att.com.

Dialogue and Discourse

SIGDIAL authors are encouraged to submit their research to the journal
Dialogue and Discourse, which is endorsed by SIGDIAL.

IMPORTANT DATES

Long and Short Papers
 Submission Deadline	March 26, 23:59, GMT-11, 2012
 Paper Notification	May 7, 2012
 Final Paper Due	June 4, 2012

Demos
 Submission Deadline	May 14, 2012
 Notification		May 21, 2012
 Final Paper Due	June 4, 2012

Conference   		July 5-6, 2012

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

For any questions, please contact the appropriate members of the
organizing committee:

General Co-Chairs
Gary Geunbae Lee, POSTECH, South Korea
Jonathan Ginzburg, Universite Paris-Diderot, France

Technical Program Co-Chairs
Claire Gardent, CNRS/LORIA Nancy, France
Amanda Stent, AT&T Labs - Research, USA

Mentoring Chair
Kallirroi Georgila, University of Southern California Institute for
Creative Technologies

Local Chair
Minhwa Chung, Seoul National University

Sponsorships Chair
Jason Williams AT&T Labs - Research, USA

SIGDIAL President
Tim Paek, Microsoft Research, USA

SIGDIAL Vice President
Amanda Stent, AT&T Labs - Research, USA

SIGDIAL Secretary/Treasurer
Kristiina Jokinen, University of Helsinki, Finland

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  Special Session at Interspeech 2012

Speech and Audio Analysis of Consumer and Semi-Professional Multimedia

             http://interspeech2012.org/Special.html

**********************************************************************


Consumer-grade and semi-professional multimedia material (video) is becoming abundant on the Internet and other online archives. It is easier than ever to download material of any kind. With cell-phones now featuring video recording capability along with broadband connectivity, multimedia material can be recorded and distributed across the world just as easily as text could just a couple of years ago. The easy availability of vast amounts of text gave a huge boost to the Natural Language Processing and Information Retrieval research communities, The above-mentioned multimedia material is set to do the same for multi-modal audio and video analysis and generation. We argue that the speech and language research community should embrace that trend, as it would profit vastly from the availability of this material, and has significant own know-how and experience to contribute, which will help shape this field.

Consumer-created (as opposed to broadcast news, “professional style”) multimedia material offers a great opportunity for research on all aspects of human-to-human as well as man-machine interaction, which can be processed offline, but on a much larger scale than is possible in online, controlled experiments. Speech is naturally an important part of these interactions, which can link visual objects, people, and other observations across modalities. Research results will inform future research and development directions in interactive settings, e.g. robotics, interactive agents, etc., and give a significant boost to core (offline) analysis techniques such as robust audio and video processing, speech and language understanding, as well as multimodal fusion.

Large-scale multi-modal analysis of audio-visual material is beginning in a number of multi-site research projects across the world, driven by various communities, such as information retrieval, video search, copyright protection, etc. While each of these have slightly different targets, they are facing largely the same challenges: how to robustly and efficiently process large amounts of data, how to represent and then fuse information across modalities, how to train classifiers and segmenters on un-labeled data, how to include human feedback, etc. Speech, language and audio researchers have considerable interest and experience in these areas, and should be at the core and forefront of this research. To make progress at a useful rate, researchers must be connected in a focused way, and be aware of each other’s work, in order to discuss algorithmic approaches, ideas for evaluation and comparisons across corpora and modalities, training methods with various degrees of supervision, available data sets, etc. Sharing software, databases, research results and projects' descriptions are some of the key elements to success which are at the core of the Speech and Language in Multimedia (SLIM) SIG's objectives.

The special session will serve these goals by bringing together researchers from different fields – speech, but also audio, multimedia – to share experience, resources and foster new research directions and initiatives. Contributions are expected on all aspects of speech and audio processing for multimedia contents: research results but also presentation of ongoing research projects or software, multimedia databases and benchmarking initiatives, etc. A special session, as opposed to a regular session, offers unique opportunities to emphasize interaction between participants with the goal of strengthening and growing the SLIM community. The following format will be adopted: a few selected talks targeting a large audience (e.g., project or dataset descriptions, overview) will open the session, followed by a panel and open discussion on how to develop our community along with poster presentations.

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