From J.Durand@mod-lang.salford.ac.uk Wed Aug 31 22:10:53 1994 Received: from leeman.york.ac.uk by tower.york.ac.uk via SMTP (931110.SGI/920502.SGI) for rao1 id AA15113; Wed, 31 Aug 94 22:10:53 +0100 Received: from io.salford.ac.uk by leeman.york.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <01093-0@leeman.york.ac.uk>; Wed, 31 Aug 1994 22:00:37 +0100 Received: from mailgate-0.salford.ac.uk by io.salford.ac.uk with SMTP (PP); Wed, 31 Aug 1994 22:12:38 +0100 From: J.Durand@mod-lang.salford.ac.uk Date: 31 Aug 94 16:46 To: rao1@unix Subject: Re: phonology series X-Mailer: University of Salford cc:Mail/SMTP gateway 1.71 Encoding: 26 TEXT Message-Id: <"leeman.yor.095:31.07.94.21.00.39"@york.ac.uk> Status: RO X-Status: Dear Richard THE PHONOLOGY OF THE WORLD'S LANGUAGES (oup) One of our prime considerations for the series is global coverage of the language (accepting diversity of modern theoretical treatments). If you can meet this - i.e. cover segmental (subsegmental), syllabic, morphological etc. structure, then in principle your book would fall within the aims of the series. One solution might be to send a detailed outline of what you want to do is send a copy to: Ms Frances Morphy Commissioning Editor (Linguistics) University of Oxford Press Walton Street OXFORD OX2 6DP Tell her I advised you to write to her and she will forward me the stuff. I can then advise. regards jacques From NFullagar@ccgate.apl.com Tue Sep 6 17:24:58 1994 Received: from leeman.york.ac.uk by tower.york.ac.uk via SMTP (931110.SGI/920502.SGI) for rao1 id AA16933; Tue, 6 Sep 94 17:24:58 +0100 Received: from oakb2s01.apl.com by leeman.york.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <23537-0@leeman.york.ac.uk>; Tue, 6 Sep 1994 17:13:55 +0100 Received: from ccgate.apl.com by oakb2s01.apl.com (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA303718; Tue, 6 Sep 1994 09:23:00 -0700 Original-Received: from ccMail by ccgate.apl.com id AA778868804 Tue, 06 Sep 94 09:26:44 PST Pp-Warning: Illegal Received field on preceding line Date: Tue, 06 Sep 94 09:26:44 PST From: "Fullagar, Neil" Encoding: 605 Text Message-Id: <9408067788.AA778868804@ccgate.apl.com> To: RA Ogden Subject: Re[2]: seeking Friends with shared interests Status: RO X-Status: A >would you like to collect my (name and) address as a gay Friend? Indeed I would. Consider yourself collected! >I am a member of QLGF, Quaker Lesbian and Gay Fellowship, the informal >group for lesbian/gay/bi/friendly Q's in Britain. I serve on the nominating committee for Friends for Lesbian & Gay Concerns, the North American counterpart. You are warned: Should you set foot in America, you're likely to be nominated for something. Thank you for the note. I'm delighted that our little electronic circle of QQs (as I sometimes refer to us) will now extend across the pond. Neil From prmullen@dbsys.com Wed Nov 30 15:34:50 1994 Received: from leeman.york.ac.uk by tower.york.ac.uk via SMTP (940715.SGI.52/931108.SGI.ANONFTP) for lang4 id AA01564; Wed, 30 Nov 94 15:34:50 GMT Received: from uu10.psi.com by leeman.york.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <13909-0@leeman.york.ac.uk>; Wed, 30 Nov 1994 15:26:24 +0000 Received: from port10.syracuse.ny.pub-ip.psi.net by uu10.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.061193-PSI/PSINet) via SMTP; id AA06159 for sjh1@tower.york.ac.uk; Wed, 30 Nov 94 10:34:39 -0500 Date: Wed, 30 Nov 94 10:03:51 PST From: prmullen@dbsys.com Subject: York-Talk license. To: John Local , Richard Ogden , Steve Harlow X-Mailer: Chameleon - TCP/IP for Windows by NetManage, Inc. Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: RO X-Status: To: Dr. John Local From: Patrick R. Mullen RE: Request for York-Talk for vision disability book-reader study. Greetings! Our company, IPA Systems of Syracuse, NY, is developing a wallet-sized 3" by 4" pocket computer and book reader for the visually disabled. As part of our research effort, we are now looking into text-to-speech synthesis, and how speech output in general could be added to our book reader system (called ReaderMan). Our goals are purely academic, and we hope that a powerful, but inexpensive book reader for the blind will be soon made available using our designs from one of the larger U.S. companies who specialize in this field (our effort is currently funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). A major problem, though, is that most non-Klatt speech synthesizers are just plain junk. All the good Klatt-based synthesizers cost an arm-and-a-leg ($5000/copy and up), or are just plain unavailable (we have tried to license DEC-TALK for over 2 years, to no avail). Dennis Klatt's MITALK system, which is the basis for many of the existing Klatt-clones on the market today, seems to have disappeared from the Internet. None of the COMP.SPEECH archives contain the source anymore. Worse still, when we contacted Ken Stevens, the director of the speech lab at MIT, we found that copies of MITALK are no longer being given out to anyone in the research community because, as Ken admitted, he his now on the board of directors and CEO of SENSIMETRICS, and the SENSIMETRICS corporation does not want to see any competitive products spawned from the MITALK code! Talk about conflict of interest! At any rate, over the course of time, we discovered the COMP.SPEECH users group on the Internet. From there, we discovered the work of the "York-Talk" group. From what we could learn, it became evident that a parallel effort in the UK has been going on for more than thirty years in the field of "Klatt-type" text-to-speech systems! Not even Prof. John Mertus (of Brown University in Rhode Island, USA), a student of Dennis Klatt (and now a consultant for IPA) was aware of the work you and others had been doing. We have down-loaded a number of your York-Talk samples, and have compared them against DEC-Talk, AT&T True Talk, KTH TracTalk, ORATOR II from Bellcore, JSRU, and ETI Eloquence from Cornel Univ. Speech Labs. Frankly, the York-Talk full-text sample was marvelous to listen to! I only hope that a full text-to-speech system is currently available that we could license for our work. Our major use of York-Talk will be to test its intelligability with our blind test subjects, and to see if it can be configured to work within the limited resources of our pocket book reader systems. If an opportunity arises to develop a commecial product from York-Talk (which I feel is almost certain to happen), IPA staff will meet with you in the UK to discuss and sign-up for licensing. If you have any questions, feel free to call me, Patrick R. Mullen, collect at (315) 453-9532 (we're on U.S. Eastern Standard Time -- that's -5 hours difference -- here in Syracuse, NY). Thank You for any help you might give us! Sincerley, Patrick R. Mullen P.S. -- American listeners, based on the sample we down loaded, respond with great enthusiasm when they hear the distinctive british accent. This effect seems also to improve intelligibility for our visually disabled testers. Who would of thought? -- PRM cc to Richard Ogden and Steve Harlow ------------------------------------- Name: Patrick R. Mullen V.P. of Engineering IPA Systems, Inc. 4943 Dahlia Circle Liverpool, NY 13088 (315)453-9532 E-mail: prmullen@dbsys.com (Patrick R. Mullen) Date: 07/29/94 Time: 11:07:05 This message was sent by Chameleon ------------------------------------- From ukmotss@felix.dircon.co.uk Wed Jan 11 19:48:02 1995 Received: from leeman.york.ac.uk by tmphost.york.ac.uk via SMTP (940715.SGI.52/931108.SGI.ANONFTP) for rao1 id AA21326; Wed, 11 Jan 95 19:48:02 GMT Received: from felix.dircon.co.uk by leeman.york.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) id <19622-0@leeman.york.ac.uk>; Wed, 11 Jan 1995 19:38:10 +