摘要：美国科学院院士，美国语言学会、认知科学学会和美国艺术和科学院会士将为大会带来精彩报告

第21届国际语音通讯协会年会INTERSPEECH 2020将于2020年10月25日-30日全程在线举行。本次大会共邀请到4位重磅嘉宾做大会主题报告（Keynote Talk），涉及的演讲内容包括语言建模、语音听觉感知、口语技术和面向会话应用的底层语音交互技术等四个方面。今天给大家介绍的演讲嘉宾是：今年ISCA medalist获奖者、美国科学院院士、美国语言学会、认知科学学会和美国艺术和科学院Fellow，牛津大学Janet B. Pierrehumbert教授。她将给大家带来题为“The cognitive status of simple and complex models”的大会报告。

Janet B. Pierrehumbert:于1975年获得哈佛大学语言学学士学位、1980年获得麻省理工学院博士学位。先后在贝尔实验室、西北大学从事英语韵律和语调的研究工作，于1996年晋升为教授，并担任西北大学语言学系主任和研究生部主任。此后，于2015年加入牛津大学，担任牛津大学电子研究中心教授。

Janet B. Pierrehumbert教授主要从事语言学、英语韵律和语调、动态语言认知与建模等方面的研究工作。她作为创始成员创立了Association for Laboratory Phonology，同时也是美国科学院院士，美国语言学会、认知科学学会和美国艺术和科学院会士。

北京时间10月26日18:00到19:00，Janet B. Pierrehumbert教授将发表题为“The cognitive status of simple and complex models”的主题演讲，欢迎大家在线观看。

Keynotes:

Title:The cognitive status of simple and complex models

Time:Monday, 26 October, 18:00~19:00 (GMT+8)

Speaker:Janet B. Pierrehumbert, University of Oxford

Abstract:

Human languages are extraordinarily rich systems. They have extremely large lexical inventories, and the elements in these inventories can be combined to generate a potentially unbounded set of distinct messages. Regularities at many different levels of representation — from the phonetic level through the syntax and semantics — support people's ability to process mappings between the physical reality of speech, and the objects, events, and relationships that speech refers to. However, human languages also simplify reality. The phonological system establishes equivalence classes amongst articulatory-acoustic events that have considerable variation at the parametric level. The semantic system similarly establishes equivalence classes amongst real-world phenomena having considerable variation.

The tension between simplicity and complexity is a recurring theme of research on language modelling. In this talk, I will present three case studies in which a pioneering simple model omitted important complexities that were either included in later models, or that remain as challenges to this day.  The first is the acoustic theory of speech production, as developed by Gunnar Fant, the inaugural Medal recipient in 1989. By approximating the vocal tract as a half-open tube, it showed that the first three formants of vowels (which are the most important for the perception of vowel quality) can be computed as a linear systems problem. The second is the autosegmental-metrical theory of intonation, to which I contributed early in my career. It made the simplifying assumption that the correct model of phonological representation will support the limited set of observed non-local patterns, while excluding  non-local patterns that do not naturally occur. The third case concerns how word-formation patterns are generalised in forming new words, whether though inflectional morphology (as in “one wug; two wugs”) or derivational morphology (as in “nickname, unnicknameable”). Several early models of word-formation assume that the morphemes are conceptual categories, sharing formal properties of other categories in the cognitive system.

For all three case studies, I will suggest that — contrary to what one might imagine — the simple models enjoyed good success precisely because they were cognitively realistic. The most successful early models effectively incorporated ways in which the cognitive system simplifies reality. These simplifications are key to the learnability and adaptability of human languages.  The simplified core of the system provides the scaffolding for more complex or irregular aspects of language. In progressing from simple models to fully complex models, we should make sure we continue to profit from insights into how humans learn, encode, remember, and produce speech patterns.

会议时间：2020年10月25日-30日

会议官网：http://www.interspeech2020.org/

更多会议实时信息，请留意会议官方公告。