Projects

In this nationally sponsored project (Austrian Science Foundation), a prototype of a concept-to-speech system was developed able to produce German utterances from a symbolic representation that contains word-specific information (phonemes, word accent, syllable structure) as well as abstract prosodic information. The representation is based on the autosegmental phonologic theory of Pierrehumbert which can be considered a de-facto standard of prosodic notation. The project focussed on developing a mapping from this symbolic description of prosody to the corresponding phonetic/acoustic parameter values (fundamental frequency, duration, intensity). An algorithm for realizing this mapping was developed and implemented. The description arrived at forms the input for a parametrizable synthesizer. The synthesizer used in the project is based on an adaptation of a demi-syllable synthesizer developed at the Institute für Nachrichtentechnik und Hochfrequenztechnik at the Vienna University of Technology.

GIST aimed at the multilingual generation of instructional texts, in particular forms. The project was sponsored within the Linguistic Research and Engineering (LRE) Sector of the Telematics Application Programme of the European Commission, the Austrian contribution was nationally sponsored. OFAI's main responsibility in this project was the development of the German tactical generator. For this aim we adapted the FUF generator by replacing the original morphological component with a version of X2MorF to enable it to cope with the rich inflectional morphology of German and by providing it with an HPSG-inspired grammar of German. We also contributed to the development of a text structuring component and the user interface.

The aim of this project was the development of core grammars of considerable size for the languages of the EU. These grammars were implemented in the ALEP formalism. OFAI joined the consortium only in the later stages as a subcontractor. Its role was to implement an experimental version of a German morphology component with a limited capability to deal with derivation. Since the morphological component of ALEP is modeled after X2Morf, OFAI's strong experience in this field could be directly employed.

This project laid the foundations for a system for the concept-to-speech system VieCtoS that combines natural language generation with speech synthesis. The project focussed on architectural issues, especially on laying the foundations for a representation that combines syntactic and semantic structures allowing for the derivation of prosodic features relevant for better intonation.

Enormous resources have been invested in the use of AI methods and AI techniques in military defence. They are mainly aimed at replacing humans in battlefields and at improving military decisions. Can AI methods be used only "to make warefare efficient", or can they also contribute to avoiding wars, e.g. by supporting decision makers who want to avoid war in a situation of crisis, or by putting solid arguments into the hands of political groups who are justly opposing a government's policy heading at war? Can AI methods furthermore serve as scientific tools for international relations studies?

VIE-DU is a unification-based natural language consulting system that integrates modern theories of syntax, semantics, and knowledge representation within a unification-based approach. At the core of the system is an HPSG-inspired grammar of German with considerable coverage. The semantics was extended to also include discourse information.

XPSpeech ("Verbesserung der Benutzerschnittstelle von Expertensystemen durch den Einsatz gesprochener Sprache") is a Speech Interface to Expert Systems that has been developed together with the Institut für Nachrichtentechnik und Hochfrequenztechnik at the Vienna University of Technology. In this project, the application of natural language processing and speech techniques to improve the user interface of expert systems was investigated. Possible application areas for such a system are domains where the user's vision is occupied by some task and where the dialogue is mostly system-driven. The system was implemented in the domain of electronic circuit repair that fulfils the necessary preconditions in an ideal way.

Datenbank-DIALOG is a German language interface to relational databases. It has been developed together with an Austrian software company and was sponsored by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Science and Research in the framework of the "Mikroelektronikförderungsprogramm der Österreichischen Bundesregierung". The system allows for relatively free (typed) input in German, and the query is translated into SQL and executed by the database management system. Special care was given to robustness and portability. Datenbank-DIALOG comes with a spelling corrector and an adaptable recognizer for formatted data. It has been ported to a number of different hardware and software platforms as well as to different domains.