A quantitative Model of Intonational Variation in the British Isles

In this project we shall investigate variation in English intonation,
insofar as it is represented in an existing corpus containing recordings
of nine dialects of English. Whereas prior models of intonation focus
on a single dialect and style, we shall construct a statistical
computational model of intonation which takes account of variation due
to dialect, speaking style, gender and individual speaker habits.

The model will be useful for the UK speech technology
industry. Developers of automatic speech synthesis and recognition systems
require linguistically rich yet quantitative models of intonation
because current systems cannot produce or recognise the intonation
patterns of different English dialects, styles or speakers. Our work
will also be valuable for speech therapists, for whom we shall prepare
an informative leaflet, and for English language teachers.