G: But perhaps the company a company that might , uh .
E: If you wanted if you wanted to transcribe , you have the
E: yes , @ @ you 'll be fine .
F: I didn't know whether I should name the company that may be providing us transcription or not .
G: Yeah .
A: Yeah .
G: There G: No .
A: If you doubt , don't do it .
H: Cuz we 're very naturalistic here .
G: Yeah .
G: But it , um , and there will be a lot of people to people talk in those meetings I bet with even three people ,
A: So E: So what is the company ?
G: so .
E: I heard a " sh " .
F: IBM .
G: Yeah .
F: So we 've been we 've been trying we 've been trying to work with them for a while on these projects
B: I guessed it from the clue ,
A: Ah !
B: yeah .
E: Ah !
E: OK .
F: and they don't F: it 's hard for them to give us money
F: but they they seem to be willing to give us time .
B: Mm - hmm .
F: And so one of the po potentials is for them to do transcription in exchange for access to the corpus .
A: Yeah .
A: So basically it seems to be like , uh ,
A: I mean , if everybody w e u was in the universities collecting data , we are , you are , I mean , sharing the data and making a bigger corpus is going to be , you know , a benefit for everybody .
F: It would be great .
B: Mmm , mmm .
G: Oh , yeah .
F: Yeah .
F: Yes ,
F: absolutely .
H: Yeah .
F: I think that would be excellent .
G: And , uh , it will really help the design too .
F: Mm - hmm .
G: It 'll m keep it from being too specific to somebody 's set up or task .
A: Yeah .
D: Should we should we interpret what he says ?
A: Morgan said yes .
G: Oh , do we F: That 's right .
D: Morgan says F: Morgan says thumbs up .
D: There we go .
G: Right , right .
H: Um ,
H: bu but how much how valuable H: Given that you 're interested in this computer - directed data and we 're not gonna have any of that ?
E: Well , that 's me personally .
E: Our group in general as Horacio was saying is also interested in some of the same general issues .
H: Yeah .
H: I see .
H: Yeah .
F: Well , and I think that B: Mmm .
E: Um ,
G: Yeah .
E: and I 'm also interested in prosody , um , use you know , u used over person to person stuff
E: like segment and helping for segmentation and stuff .
H: Right .
G: Yeah , so we have some ideas there but not enough data to train .
F: So al
F: Right .
H: Mm - hmm .
G: So Harry , and Kemal and I probably G: So actually having different kinds of conversations is really helpful too
F: Mm - hmm .
G: because to g to make these models robust .
G: You don't wanna train on just a few people 's voices
G: cuz then you 'll just learn the their prosodic patterns .
B: Mmm .
H: Right .
B: Mmm .
G: That 's not what we want .
E: Mm - hmm .
F: So so how are you gonna get dra ground truth on that ?
F: So so we should G: That is from the transcription and from the speaker s segmentation .
G: That 's not hard .
F: Mm - hmm .
G: I think the hard part is getting enough training data and
F: Mm - hmm .
G: nor you also need normalization data .
G: So you 're sort of iteratively normalizing as you go through the G: So .
F: But anyway , what I was gonna say is that although we 're not gonna have speech directed to a computer , my expectation is that the acoustic models will be very similar .
F: The language models probably won't be .
E: N the language models c Yeah .
G: Actually the acoustic may not be either .
G: So , it 's E: Really ?
F: Yeah , I if it 's Wizard of Oz I think it will be .
E: Oh , sure .
F: If they know that G: Yeah , if it 's very good ,
F: Yeah .
G: that 's true .
A: Yeah .
G: If it makes mistakes it 'll be different though
E: Yeah .
E: On the language model we 're G: I think it H: Hmm , right .
B: Mmm .
F: The language model will be certainly be different
E: uh we 're we 're gonna be using the same thing that we 've done in the past
F: but E: which is , you know , we need a natural language grammar written anyway .
E: It 's written in unification grammar framework .
F: Mm - hmm .
E: um , but with context free grammar , power ,
E: and so it 's just changed directly into something the recognizer recognizes off of directly with with no ,
E: um ,
F: And you 're gonna hand c hand - code that ?
E: It 's it 's it 's hand - coded .
E: Because we need we need to write the natural language grammar anyway to understand .
E: So it 's it 's a small , you know , ATIS - sized type task .
F: Oh , I I uh
F: sure , sure , sure , sure .
F: I see .
B: Hmm .
E: So ,
E: yeah , that 's that 's the way we 've been approaching it .
F: Right , if you wanna interpret it you uh need to do do that anyway .
E: Eh if we if we 're ge
E: yeah , we you know ,
E: if we 're gonna be able to interpret it then I mean , if we 're not gonna be able to interpret that then it 's not gonna do us much good anyway to recognize it .
E: So we might as well go directly from the natural language grammar .
D: Is it is it gonna be like an HPSG kind of grammar ?
E: It is a unification base ,
E: it 's not it 's not as as theoretically bound as HPSG in particular ,
E: although the couple of people that we have working on it have HPSG backgrounds .
D: I see .
F: So what 's your time frame look like for doing meetings , actually starting to record some ?
A: I guess
E: It 's all up to when I have free time .
A: Yeah .
A: I mean ,
A: except E: Anybody else want to work on this by the way , Horacio ?
F: Mm - hmm .
A: Well A: well , indeed .
A: I mean , most people , you know , after this evaluation and conference @ @ <comment> should be working on these type of things . At least ,
B: Mmm .
E: Uh - huh .
G: Yeah .
A: you know
E: Well I know they 're all working on mediated spaces
E: but there 's a lotta aspects o e to that to that project .
B: Yeah .
A: Yeah ,
A: yeah , but but eventually I mean , will be people working on uh kind of recognition aspects and , uh , you know , and and and in core technology .
A: So I mean , recognition technology and also core , you know , algorithms , et cetera .
A: And for those people to have these data will be , you know , the best way to , you know , develop the systems to an @ @ .
E: Right .
F: Mm - hmm .
F: Well the the reason I 'm asking is that it 's certainly better to get in early with standards , and data formats , and conventions .
A: Yeah .
A: Yeah .
G: Yeah ,
E: Yes .
G: definitely .
E: Yes .
A: So probably , uh , on the F: Um .
E: Well , so we haven't even you know , we haven't collected a byte yet
G: Right .
G: That 's actually why I called this meeting ,
E: so .
G: cuz i I mean , you 're both working on it and with , you know , different sampling rates , and these silly things like that .
F: Well , yeah ,
F: it 's a it 's ex excellent , excellent .
B: Mmm , mmm .
E: Right .
E: Yeah .
F: Yeah ,
F: that 's right .
B: Mmm .
F: I mean , just just just agreeing on a sampling rate and a number of bits , and , uh , header formats and all that .
A: Yeah .
G: So E: And we have the same sampling rate .
G: Yeah .
B: Sampling rate in the end .
G: What ?
E: One one thing we do know is that we 're we 're all producing NIST Sphere files in in , uh , eh in the standard format .
B: Yeah .
G: Oh ,
G: OK .
G: NIST headers .
F: Sixteen bit , sixteen kilohertz ?
E: Sixteen bit , sixteen kilohertz .
B: Bits , sixteen - K ,
G: OK , s
F: Eh , good good .
E: So at the end we 're all B: yeah .
E: And the amazing thing is that even even , you know , the entire way through we 're actually using some very , very similar stuff .
F: Big endian , little endian ?
H: Yeah .
G: OK .
G: Well I just made that up
E: And so tha
G: but ,
E: yeah .
G: um .
F: Well , but that 's that was coincidence , right ?
E: So ,
G: But that E: Yeah , it 's coincidence that it 's very fortunate cuz B: Yes ,
G: yeah , yeah .
B: that 's right ,
B: not , but G: But you have different na you we 're gonna have different , you know , hardware and and E: Yeah .
H: Yeah .
E: We actually have , yeah , quite similar hardware as it turns out .
B: It 's similar
B: but not quite the same .
G: OK ,
H: But it but it G: so E: Which is ver it 's it 's very good ,
B: Yeah .
E: yeah .
G: so .
E: Um , so we 're actually B: So the bit we 're a bit deficient in as we F: So I I think probably the biggest thing would F: Well , no
F: that that wouldn't be true .
F: If you 're not gonna transcribe it yourself , then you 're not gonna care too much about our transcription conventions .
G: Actually that 's the transcription conventions I was talking about this with Jane it 's really important to people at least like me who wanna know , um , certain @ @ <comment> uh , who are looking at aspects that are sort of they 're not words but they 're structural things you 're trying to recognize .
E: Well E: Uh F: Right of it .
F: Mm - hmm .
G: And also I guess for the speaker .
G: People interested in the speaker separation
G: because what you call a turn and the end of a turn , and that it it 's horribly confused if you don't sort of