Objective
This proposal aims to enable the holder of the fellowship to undertake further training through research with the Inst. für Linguistik – PHONETIK (IfL), Univ. zu Köln. Diversification of competence should allow her to contribute further to research on developing multilingual human language technologies (HLTs), in areas such as text-to-speech (TTS) & spoken language translation involving both Maltese (Mlt) & the variety of English of speakers of Mlt, Maltese English (ME). Like other languages of small communities, Mlt as also ME, are understudied e.g. in their phonetics & phonology, especially their prosody & intonation. Research is hindered by the unavailability of structured resources, i.e. annotated corpora. Limited research often results in poor quality spoken output, particularly of the intonational interface, in HLTs developed for Mlt. This proposal aims to: 1) enable further research on the prosody & intonation of Mlt & ME, in particular on contrastive intonation & on prosody & emotion, by developing computer-based annotation standards & implementing database management techniques for use with spoken corpora of Mlt & ME; 2) provide annotated data from such corpora for use by both the research community & those involved in developing HLT tools such as more natural sounding TTS systems for use in the Maltese context. Working on Mlt in Köln will locate the research in the broad context of multilingualism supported there; work on variation & variability in ME will further understanding of phenomena arising in contexts of languages in contact. More generally, in the spirit of support for cultural & linguistic diversity in Europe, this research will enable Mlt, one of the languages of post-2004 enlargement for which expertise & resources are still in need of development, to “join the club” of other, more widely researched languages, ensuring that the principle of language equality be respected.
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Call for proposal
FP7-PEOPLE-IEF-2008
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Funding Scheme
MC-IEF - Intra-European Fellowships (IEF)Coordinator
50931 Koln
Germany