Linguistics and speech technology: from theory to tools to theory

Funded within “Azioni per la realizzazione di Summer School promosse dalle Università Pugliesi - a.a. 2021/2022”

Lecce, Italy, 29 August – 2 September 2022

Aims, objectives, location and articulation

The aim of the Summer School is to bring students in the humanities closer to a technical-scientific approach to language analysis and to provide students in technology the opportunity to understand the need for in-depth knowledge of linguistic information in order to work in speech technology.

After an introductory part aimed at guaranteeing the necessary linguistic knowledge, participants will first be introduced to the basic tools for analyzing speech (from individual segments to prosodic structures, including dialogic structures), and then to more complex tools to get to machine learning techniques, in particular neural networks. The goal is realizing an innovative course for students in humanities, because it brings them closer to a technical-scientific approach to language analysis, but also for students of technical-scientific disciplines, because it allows them to understand the specifics of language analysis and the need for linguistic information in the use of technological tools. More specifically, the program includes five modules (official language will be English):

1 - Discussion of the main basic concepts concerning segmental phonetics and phonology as well as prosody, with special attention to interfaces with syntactic and dialogical structures (Crocco - Univ. Ghent, Belgium);

2 - Useful tools for speech analysis: Using Praat and investigating segmental and prosodic features (Galatà, CNR Padova);

3 - Forced alignment and its usefulness for segmental and prosodic analysis (Draxler - Institute of Phonetics and Speech Processing, Munich, Germany);

4 - Automatic learning systems and speech analysis: Neural networks - where to find them, how to use them and what limits/errors may be expected (Cutugno, Univ. Federico II Napoli);

5a - Neural networks / automatic learning and speech recognition (Cedat 85, Palmerini);

5b - Neural networks and dialogue systems (Suglia, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh UK)

The school implies 50 hours of activities (40 of activities during the school and 10 for the realization of a final report) and will take place at the University of Salento, Rettorato, in “Sala delle conferenze” and “Sala della Gherardesca”.

The summerschool is funded by Agenzia per il Diritto allo Studio Universitario (A.Di.S.U) and Regione Puglia.

The summerschool is organized by Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici - Università del Salento (Organizer: Barbara Gili Fivela) in collaboration with Cedat85.