Trinity College, Dublin

The TCD group has a particular focus on voice quality and its role in communicating emotion, mood and attitude. The group has been to the forefront in developing novel techniques to enable acoustic voice analysis and has carried out numerous detailed analyses of voice source variation. Its work includes perceptual experimentation using synthesised voice qualities to explore the mapping of voice quality to affect Research is also oriented towards the provision of better voices in synthesis, capable of better approximating the richly varying human voice source. From this work has developed an interest in the interaction of voice quality and pitch. It is hoped to work towards a new model speech prosody, which encompasses voice quality as well as pitch parameters, and which places the communication of affect at the centre of prosodic function. The group also has a strong interest in the Irish language, and hopes to embark on comparative work on the prosody of affect in Irish and English. Funding for a three-year project on Irish prosody has recently been awarded (funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences , IRCHSS). The group have been partners in a long list of major European and national funded projects and networks including EU funded COST 258 (2000-2001): The naturalness of synthetic speech, SPACT, phase 1 and 2 (1995-1998): Application of speech recognition/synthesis technology in the MIR space station (funded by the European Space Agency), EU funded VERIVOX (1997-1998): Voice variability in speaker verification, CABÓG (1993-1996): A development system for Irish text-to-speech conversion ( funded by ACCUTRON, Limerick and the Irish-American Foundation), . EU funded ESPRIT/BRA project SPEECH MAPS (1992-1995): Sound-to-gesture inversion in speech, EU funded ESPRIT/BRA working group VOX (1992-1995): The analysis and synthesis of speaker characteristics, and EU funded ESPRIT/BRA project working group ACCOR I and II (1989-1995): Articulatory-acoustic correlations in coarticulation.

Ailbhe Ní Chasaide is Senior Lecturer in Experimental Phonetics, CLCS, Trinity College Dublin, and currently Government of Ireland Senior Research Fellow, funded by the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences. Member of Council and previously Treasurer and Vice-president of the International Phonetics Association. Irish partner in 7 completed international research projects/working groups (ACCOR I and II, SPEECHMAPS, VOX, VERIVOX funded by the EU Esprit BRA, and SPACT funded by and European Space Agency). Currently principal investigator for an IRCHSS funded project Prosody of Irish Dialects: the use of intonation, rhythm, voice quality for linguistic and paralinguistic signalling, and Irish coordinator on the EU INTERREG funded project WISPR – Welsh and Irish Speech Processing Resources. Research interests and publications in the following areas: linguistic and paralinguistic use of voice quality, articulatory acoustic studies of secondary articulation with particular reference to Irish and voicing, aspiration and preaspiration.

Christer Gobl is Lecturer in Speech Science, Centre for Language and Communication Studies, Trinity College, Dublin, formerly at Dept. of Speech, Music and Hearing, KTH, Stockholm. Irish coordinator of EU action COST 258 on speech synthesis and collaborator on many international projects (ACCOR I and II, SPEECHMAPS, VOX, VERIVOX, funded by the EU, and SPACT funded by ESA). Currently involved in the following projects: WISPR – Welsh and Irish Speech Processing Resources (EU funded INTERREG project) and Prosody of Irish Dialects (funded by Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences). Research interests and publications in voice source analysis and modelling, production/synthesis/perception of voice quality and the mapping of voice quality to emotion, mood and attitude.