Towards Speech Recognition of the Italian Language Based on Detection of Landmarks and Other Acoustic Cues to Features
| Componente | Qualifica | Struttura | Categoria |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel | Research scientist | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA | Altro personale aggregato Sapienza o esterni, titolari di borse di studio di ricerca |
Modeling the process that a listener actuates in deriving words intended by a speaker, requires setting a hypothesis on how lexical items are stored in memory. This project proposes to test Stevens's hypothesis of Lexical Access (Stevens, 2002), that is, that words are stored as a hierarchical arrangement of distinctive features, by extending the analysis to Italian. Exploring a new language will provide insight into whether Steven's approach has universal application across languages, with relevant implication for the understanding of how human brain recognizes speech. A principled introduction into the model of the concept of inference is also proposed. While developing a complete Italian recognizer is my long-term goal, this project forms its founding block, and combines my two professional activities in speech and impulse ultrawideband radio modeling.
In May 2019, I was named a 2019-2020 fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, joining more than 50 women and men in the incoming fellowship class as they pursue work across the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and arts. As the 2019-2020 William Bentinck-Smith Fellow, I will pursue the project in a community dedicated to exploration and inquiry at Harvard's Institute for Advanced Study.