The first topic that I am going to explain is ‘Speech recognition and speech synthesis’, which belongs to the researchs of the Association for Computational Linguistics. The ’speech recognition’ converts spoken words to machine-readable input (for example, to the binary code for a string of character codes). The term voice recognition may also be used to refer to speech recognition, but more precisely refers to speaker recognition, which attempts to identify the person speaking, as opposed to what is being said. The ’speech synthesis’ is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal language text into speech; other systems render symbolic linguistic representations like phonetic transcriptions into speech. Microsoft has been researching and developing speech technologies for over a decade, and Windows Vista contais both types of speech. Speech recognition is even more complicated than speech synthesis.

The second topic on which I am going to focus is the ’Cross-retail Multi-agent Retail Comparison (CROSSMARC)’. CROSSMARC will develop next-generation technology for electronic-retail product comparison, drawing on techniques from language engineering, machine learning and user modelling. A number of commercial agent-based systems have been developed to help Internet shoppers decide what to buy and where to buy it from. The majority of these systems, however, assume that product names and features are expressed in a uniform and monolingual (English) manner. Furthermore, they need to be configured manually for new product types, a process that requires substantial effort and time. CROSSMARC will develop novel technology for e-retail product comparison. Unlike existing technology, the project will lead to systems able to process pages written in several languages (initially, Greek, English, Italian, and French), and adaptable to new product types via semi-automatic tools. CROSSMARC will exploit language technology and machine learning techniques for information extraction, that will be extended and tailored to the characteristics of e-shopping.

The last topic on which I am going to focus is ‘Pragmatics‘ which is being researched by the Association for Computational Linguistics and Natural Processing Language. Pragmatics is the study of the ability of natural language speakers to communicate more than that which is explicitly stated. The ability to understand another speaker’s intended meaning is called pragmatic competence. An utterance describing pragmatic function is described as metapragmatic. In the ‘Journal of Pragmatics’ states that Linguistic pragmatics has been able to formulate a number of questions over the years that are essential to our understanding of language as people’s main instrument of “natural” and “societal” interaction. By providing possible theoretical foundations for the study of linguistic practice, linguistic pragmatics has helped to increase our knowledge of the forms, functions, and foundations, of human interaction. The ‘Journal of Pragmatics’ identifies with the above general scope and aims of pragmatics.

Sources:

www.wikipedia.org

www.iit.demokritos.gr

http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/505593/description#description