Pluricentric languages (PLCLs) are a common type among the languages of the world. Presently 43 languages have been identified to belong to this category. These languages are being used in at least two nations, having an official function there and forming national varieties of their own with specific linguistic and pragmatic features. In addition to the variation on the level of national standard varieties, there is also so called “second level variation” on a regional and local level that is often being used in diglossic speech situations where code switching is a salient feature with two or more varieties being used within the same utterance. The amount of linguistic variation in pluricentric languages is considerable and poses a challenge for speech recognition in particular and human language technology in general.

The motivation for this sattelite workshop is the observation that pluricentric languages have mainly been described linguistically but not sufficiently been dealt with in the field of speech technology. This is particularly the case with the so-called “non-dominant varieties”. This sattelite workshop focuses on PLCLs specific topics such as the development of methods for creating resources (e.g., how to elicitate code switching, how to develop annotation tools that are variant-independent), novel statistical methods for speech and language technology needed to deal with small data sets (e.g., OOV handling in language modeling), speech synthesis for non-dominant varieties, and how to use speech technology to aid quantitative sociolinguistic studies.

Submission Guidelines

All abstracts must be original and not simultaneously submitted to another journal or conference. We ask for Abstracts of 400-600 words submitted by April 5, 2019. They will be peer-reviewed and published as Book of Abstracts online. At the workshop, all presentations will be oral and of 15 min. length.

A special issue in Speech Communication will be later published containing peer-reviewed substantially extended versions of the abstracts accepted to the conference.

For more information consult http://www.pluricentriclanguages.org/ndv-interspeech-workshop-graz-2019/.

Committees

Organizing Committee

• Prof. Rudolf Muhr (University of Graz, Austria)
• Dr. Barbara Schuppler (Graz University of Technology, Austria)
• Dr. Tania Habib (University of Engineering and Technology Lahore, Pakistan)
• Dr. Sarmad Hussain (University of Engineering and Technology Lahore, Pakistan)

Scientific committee

• Adrian Leemann (Lancaster University, UK)
• Abir Masmoudi (MIRACL Laboratoire, Sfax, Tunesia)
• Ahmed Ali (Qatar Computing Research Institute, Doha, Qatar)
• Corey Miller (MITRE Corporation, Virginia, US)
• György Szaszák (Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary)
• Iosif Mporas (School of Engineering and Technology, University of Hertfordshire, Hartfield, UK)
• Jurai Šimko (Univ. of Helsinki, Finnland)
• Kalika Bali (Microsoft India, Bangalore, India)
• Katri Hiovain (University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland)
• Lamina Hadrich Belguith ( University of Sfax, Tunesia)
• Martin Hagmüller (Graz University of Technology, Austria)
• Mathieu Avanzi (Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7, France)
• Michael Stadtschnitzer (Fraunhofer Institute, Sankt Augustin, Germany)
• Mircea Giurgiu (Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Rumania)
• Paulraj M. (Sri Ramakrishna Institute of Technology, Perur Chettipalayam, Coimbatore India)
• Philip N. Garner (Idiap, Martigny, Switzerland)
• Philippe Boula de Mareüil (LIMSI, Orsay, France)
• Sunayana Sitaram (Microsoft India, Bangalore, India)
• Suwon Shon (MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab, Cambridge, MA US)
• Yves Scherrer (University of Helsinki, Finland)

Contact

Registration for Senior Scientists costs 100 Euros, for students the registration is for free (but it is still necessary to register in order to be able to participate). Please register for the workshop at https://www.softconf.com/j/is2019-payment-workshops/ All questions about submissions should be emailed to rudolf.muhr@uni-graz.at