Lingformant » Technology and language

University of the Basque Country researcher develops new system called Saroi to detect and correct syntactic mistakes in Basque

Vili Maunula — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:24:07 +0000

Saroi is a general tool which, apart from dealing with errors, is used for making consultations about structure in the trees of analysis and for undertaking searches for linguistic structures in such trees.

Full article: Basque Research

Doing what the brain does – how computers learn to listen

Vili Maunula — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 06:14:06 +0000

We see, hear and feel, and make sense of countless diverse, quickly changing stimuli in our environment seemingly without effort. However, doing what our brains do with ease is often an impossible task for computers. Researchers at the Leipzig Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging in London have now developed a mathematical model which could significantly improve the automatic recognition and processing of spoken language. In the future, this kind of algorithms which imitate brain mechanisms could help machines to perceive the world around them.

Full article: Max Planck Society Press Release

Computer learns sign language by watching TV

Vili Maunula — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:39:10 +0000

It’s not only humans that can learn from watching television. Software developed in the UK has worked out the basics of sign language by absorbing TV shows that are both subtitled and signed.

Full article: New Scientist

Speech prediction software

Vili Maunula — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 08:58:33 +0000

If people who finish your sentences drive you crazy, it’s a safe bet that you’re probably not going to be nuts about new software that can do just that. It’s been dreamed up as a speech-recognition equivalent to the predictive text on cellphones. Mutter a half-considered thought into the microphone and the software will plunder a database to complete half-formed words or sentences – in Japanese, at least.

Full article: New Scientist

Polish and Italian get advanced language recognition system

Vili Maunula — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 10:22:04 +0000

European researchers have developed the most advanced spontaneous language understanding (SLU) systems for both the Polish and Italian languages. It is the first time SLUs of this level were developed for these languages, according to the Luna project behind the work. …

Full article: AlhpaGalileo.Org

UPM School of Computing researchers open up a new road for the computational representation of languages

Vili Maunula — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 06:26:06 +0000

Researchers from the Validation and Business Applications Group (VAI) at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid’s School of Computing (FIUPM) have developed an intelligent computational model of the descriptive grammar of the Spanish language. This opens up new possibilities for the computational representation of languages and natural language processing applications. …

Full article: Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

Professor studies what cars can learn from drivers’ words

Vili Maunula — Thu, 08 May 2008 11:25:19 +0000

Years ago, Stanford communication and sociology researcher Clifford Nass wondered why some people treated their computers as humans, instead of machines, a question that led him down a path of interesting research. Now he wonders about drivers willing to have personal conversations with the artificial voice in their carsâ€”and what will become of the secrets the humans share with their four-wheeled friends. …

Full article: Physorg

‘Babelfish’ to translate alien tongues could be built

Vili Maunula — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 19:45:50 +0000

If we ever make contact with intelligent aliens, we should be able to build a universal translator to communicate with them, according to a linguist and anthropologist in the US. Such a “babelfish”, which gets its name from the translating fish in Douglas Adams’s book The Hitchhikerâ€™s Guide to the Galaxy, would require a much more advanced understanding of language than we currently have. But a first step would be recognising that all languages must have a universal structure, according to Terrence Deacon of the University of California, Berkeley, US.

Read the full news article at New Scientist Space

Nerve-tapping neckband used in ‘telepathic’ chat

Vili Maunula — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:17:31 +0000

A neckband that translates thought into speech by picking up nerve signals has been used to demonstrate a “voiceless” phone call for the first time. With careful training a person can send nerve signals to their vocal cords without making a sound. These signals are picked up by the neckband and relayed wirelessly to a computer that converts them into words spoken by a computerised voice. …

Read the full news at New Scientist Tech

First Humanoid Robot That Will Develop Language May Be Coming Soon

Vili Maunula — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 11:13:03 +0000

iCub, a one metre-high baby robot which will be used to study how a robot could quickly pick up language skills, will be available next year. …

Read the full news article at Science Daily

Research team develops systems that process and understand spoken language, especially Basque

Vili Maunula — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 11:11:44 +0000

A research team drawn from the Department of Systems and Automation Engineering of the Polytechnic University School and from the Faculty of Informatics at the Donostia-San SebastiÃ¡n campus of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and led by lecturer Miren Karmele Lopez de IpiÃ±a, is developing systems that process and understand spoken language and automatically obtain information particularly from Basque radio and television. …

Read the full news article at Eurekalert

First multilingual dictionary based on universal words

Vili Maunula — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 06:09:56 +0000

Researchers at the Universidad PolitÃ©cnica de Madridâ€™s School of Computing have developed an original system for building multilingual dictionaries based on multiple term equivalences from what are known as universal words. System reliability and accuracy is 88%. …

Scots language database takes the high road

Vili Maunula — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 12:04:58 +0000

A searchable database of over four million modern Scottish words has gone online today. The Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech was put up by Glasgow University with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The database contains a dictionary of Scottish words since 1945, proceedings from the Scottish Parliament, diaries, correspondence and audio recordings of texts. …

Read the full news story at Informatics Online

Software finds learning language child’s play

Vili Maunula — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:18:24 +0000

A computer program that learns to decode language sounds in a similar way to a baby could shed new light on how humans acquire the ability to talk, say US researchers. It casts doubt on the idea that babies are born with an innate understanding of all possible language sounds. …

Read the full news article at New Scientist Tech

Language software to cull and analyze text and speech in works

Vili Maunula — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 10:52:25 +0000

Researchers are hoping to help the U.S. government sort through data in various languages by developing software that can quickly cull and analyze text and speech. …

Read the full news story at Yahoo! News