One of the most common methods of data collection in second language research is using questionnaires of various kinds. In spite of the wide application of questionnaires in the second language field, there does not seem to be sufficient awareness in the profession about the theory of questionnaire design and processing. The usual--and in most cases false--perception is that anybody with a bit of common sense can design good questionnaires, and the practice of questionnaire design and use has remained largely uninformed by theory.
Speech processing addresses various scientific and technological areas. It includes speech analysis and variable rate coding, in order to store or transmit speech. It also covers speech synthesis, especially from text, speech recognition, including speaker and language identification, and spoken language understanding.
This book offers a highly accessible introduction to Natural Language Processing, the field that underpins a variety of language technologies ranging from predictive text and email filtering to automatic summarization and translation. You'll learn how to write Python programs to analyze the structure and meaning of texts, drawing on techniques from the fields of linguistics and artificial intelligence.
This book addresses different aspects of the research field and a wide range of topics in speech signal processing, speech recognition and language processing. The chapters are divided in three different sections: Speech Signal Modeling, Speech Recognition and Applications. The chapters in the first section cover some essential topics in speech signal processing used for building speech recognition as well as for speech synthesis systems: speech feature enhancement, speech feature vector dimensionality reduction, segmentation of speech frames into phonetic segments.
This social and historical exploration traces the history of sugarcane from its home in New Guinea to Shakespeare's England. Fascinating sugar lore and anecdotes are included, such as how Queen Elizabeth I became so partial to hippocras (mulled wine), sugared almonds, and pastilles that her teeth turned completely black. Explored are the political and sociological impacts of sugar on the world and the tremendous riches available to the unscrupulous few who grew and sold it. The days of manual processing are described, when fortunes were built on the backbreaking labor of slaves. The resulting wars and geopolitical shifts that have shaped the modern world are discussed in detail.
