Re: Replacing Voices

  • From: "Jerry Neufeld" <jerry.neufeld@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2005 08:43:15 -0500

Good morning.

With all respect, and I do admire you for having tried to explain the nature
of a phoneme, your explanation, I'm afraid, is very far from what we
linguists and psycholinguists, I one of the latter, view as what constitutes
a phoneme. Your concept more closely resembles what might figure in the
nomenclature of an electronics engineer, experienced in working with or
actually developing hardware synthesizers. Phonemes, as we normally
conceptualize them, are abstract, consisting of a set of basic sounds
characteristic to a dialect and/or language. In no way, however, do
phonemes, as we use the term in linguistics and psycholinguistics, embody
instructions for the vocal apparatus, not at all. Nor are they fixed
entities, heard only in one way in speech perception. Phonemes are abstract
in the sense that one, e.g. /a/ as used in the word, father, may have 15
different possible articulatory realizations, depending upon what precedes
and follows that sound (/a/) as well as upon other factors. Something a bit
closer to your concept might be what we call a phone, although, even here,
important differences exist.

Have a happy holiday. Again, I respect your interest in and attempt to
tackle the definition of a phoneme, something I often spend more than an
hour doing in my introductory university classes in linguistics.

G. Neufeld
Department of linguistics
University of Ottawa
Ottawa, Ontario
e-mail: gerald.neufeld@xxxxxxxxxx


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Will Pearson" <will-pearson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, December 28, 2004 9:27 AM
Subject: Re: Replacing Voices


> Hi;
>
> It's worth stressing that ECI.INI also contains the phoneme
characteristics
> that are used by Eloquence.  Phonemes are a group of sounds at specific
> frequencies that represent the sounds contained within a given speech
sound,
> mainly consisting of four formants, or four frequencies within the
frequency
> spectrum where the signal amplitude is the strongest.  Basically, the
> phonemes determine how speech sounds such as a, b, c,d, aa, ba, ca, da,
etc.
> are pronounced.
>
> Playing with these is like playing Russian roulette.  I recently read a
> research paper in the online journal, Nature Neuroscience.  The paper was
on
> early language acquisition, both auditory and visual.  The conclusions
were
> quite interesting.  They concluded that our brains, as humans, are finely
> tuned to discriminate between different phoneme blocks, and that our brain
> trains itself to become accustomed to the phonemes we encounter at an
early
> age.  So, you are basically accustomed to the phonemes you were listening
to
> when you were about one or two years old.  This doesn't prohibit someone
> from listening to different phoneme blocks, just that it is going to be
more
> difficult for someone to determine where one phoneme block finishes, and
the
> other starts, in situations where the phonemes differ from what someone is
> accustomed to.  Of course, as our brains have a certain plasticity, they
can
> become reconditioned to detect different phoneme blocks, something that
> becomes very difficult beyond a certain age, but at least initially,
someone
> listening to a different set of phonemes will find it hard to actually
> detect words, sentences, etc. correctly.  One situation where I'm sure
we've
> all experienced this, is when listening to a speech synthesizer for the
> first time.  It takes months for our brains to become conditioned to the
> phonemes contained within a speech synthesizer, and changing these
phonemes
> will mean your brain will have to become reconditioned all over again,
same
> goes for learning a foreign language.
>
> So, if you change the phonemes you will get mispronunciation by Eloquence,
> or at least it will appear as mispronunciation to you.  IMO, if Freedom
> Scientific responded to any bugs raised regarding mispronunciation by
> Eloquence after someone had altered the phoneme characteristics, with the
> response that it's a system, or user, specific fault, they'd be right on
the
> money.
>
> Will Pearson
> Researcher (Accessibility and Human Computer Interaction) - Sheffield
Hallam
> University
> Microsoft MVP (Visual Developer/VC++)
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Horspool, Matthew F." <drjaws@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 28, 2004 10:12 AM
> Subject: RE: Replacing Voices
>
>
> > OK!  This has opened up a new world!
> >
> > -------------------------
> > Mr. Matthew F. Horspool
> >
> > Send me an Electronic Mail to
> > drjaws@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> > Add
> > horspool@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > to your MSN contact list
> >
> > Or Visit my web site at
> > http://www.horspool.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
> > -------------------------
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
> > Behalf Of Ricque
> > Sent: Monday, December 27, 2004 9:21 PM
> > To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Subject: Re: Replacing Voices
> >
> >
> > Hi Matthew,
> > With respect to the Rocco voice,
> > Yes, I have already done this with versions 3.7 thru 6.0
> > I'm guessing that it goes for all voices, but I am waiting to hear from
> > Jack, for clerification on that. Richard Justice
> > ----- Original Message ----- 
> > From: "Horspool, Matthew F." <drjaws@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Sent: Monday, December 27, 2004 3:58 PM
> > Subject: RE: Replacing Voices
> >
> >
> > > So does this mean that you can take Eloquence from JAWS 3.2 and import
> >
> > > it to JAWS 4.51?  Or possibly later?
> > >
> > > -------------------------
> > > Mr. Matthew F. Horspool
> > >
> > > Send me an Electronic Mail to
> > > drjaws@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > >
> > > Add
> > > horspool@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > to your MSN contact list
> > >
> > > Or Visit my web site at http://www.horspool.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
> > > -------------------------
> > >
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
> > > Behalf Of Jack Lowe
> > > Sent: Sunday, December 26, 2004 10:58 PM
> > > To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > Subject: Re: Rocco Voice
> > >
> > >
> > > Yes, you can replace the new Rocco voice with the old one, and here's
> > > how... First of all, you'll need an old version of Jaws on CD.
> > Version
> > > 4.02 or
> > > older.  I have the file saved if anyone would want it.  I don't know
> > if
> > > this
> > > group allows attachments or not.
> > > Anyway, the name of the Rocco voice file is ECI.INI.  Here's how you
> > > replace
> > > the new one with the old one.
> > > I do have to say that I haven't tried this with 6.0 yet because the
> > > files
> > > aren't in the same place as they've been in past versions.  But i'm
> > sure
> > >
> > > that you can do this in 6.0 as well.
> > > First, get a copy of the old ECI.INI file.
> > > Then, go to drive C and look for your Jaws program.  Mine says Jaws
> > 510.
> > > Open that folder and paste the original ECI.INI file into that folder.
> > > It
> > > will ask you if you want to replace one with the other.  Tell it yes.
> > > Now you can exit out of there. Now, close Jaws with incert F4, then
> > > restart it.  The old rocco voice will
> > > be there when the program restarts.    Jack
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message ----- 
> > > From: "Chris & Mary" <cmchaffin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > Sent: Sunday, December 26, 2004 5:43 PM
> > > Subject: Re: Rocco Voice
> > >
> > >
> > > > Hi there,
> > > > I was not aware that you could take a voice from one Jaws and
> > replace
> > > > it with an older version of the same voice. Could you please explain
> > > > the steps in doing this? Thanks in advance,
> > > > Chris Chaffin
> > > >
> > > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > > From: "Jack Lowe" <akronjack1982@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > > To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > > Sent: Sunday, December 26, 2004 4:37 PM
> > > > Subject: Rocco Voice
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >> Hey Everyone,
> > > >> I've mentioned this to a few other people and I was wondering...
> > Is
> > > >> it just me, or is the newer Rocco voice really offal!  Well, I've
> > > >> found a way around that.  I went back to Jaws 4.02, before they
> > > >> changed it, and took the original Rocco voice and incorporated it
> > > >> into my current version of Jaws.  Now, I haven't tried this with
> > 6.0
> > > >> yet, but it works just great with 5.10.  The newer voice sounds
> > like
> > > >> he has a mouth full of marbles. I
> > > >> really like the original version of Rocco much better.   Jack
> > > >> --
> > > >> To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > >> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to
> > > >> jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject
> > > line.
> > > >> Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw
> > > >>
> > > >> If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the
> > list,
> > >
> > > >> or the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list.
> > > >> Rather contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > >>
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To
> > > > unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to
> > > > jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject
> > > > line. Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw
> > > >
> > > > If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the
> > list,
> > > > or
> > > > the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather
> > > > contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > >
> > > --
> > > To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to
> > > jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject
> > line.
> > > Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw
> > >
> > > If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list,
> > or
> > > the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather
> > > contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to
> > jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.
> > > Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw
> > >
> > > If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list,
> > or
> > the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather
> > contact
> > the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> > --
> > To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to
> > jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.
> > Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw
> >
> > If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or
> > the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather
> > contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> > --
> > To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to
> jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.
> > Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw
> >
> > If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or
> the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather
contact
> the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
>
>
> --
> To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to
jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.
> Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw
>
> If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or
the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather contact
the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

--
To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to 
jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.
Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw

If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or the 
way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather contact the 
list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Other related posts: