Rob van Son

Petition for a Software Patent Free Europe

I signed a petition to protect Europe from an ill-advised extension of patent law. Please read about these plans and the petition. This petition is directed to the European Parliament. Its goal is to warn European Authorities against the dangers of software patents. This petition is supported by the EuroLinux Alliance together with European companies and open source associations. Please make this petition well known to everybody concerned.
(UPDATE: It seems that the introduction of software patents is being reconsidered as a result of, among many others, this petition. However, I do think that signing this petition is still important). See also here for the latest news

See my Publications

Links

SpeakGoodChinese, a practise tool for learning Mandarin tones
FRYSS (temporary)
My previous Project
My Intas 915 support site.
De Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen of which I am currently a member of the board
A labeled Spoken Language Corpus (Dutch speech) the corresponding Label Protocol (HTML) and as a PostScript file.
My Open Source Software Demo's and Downloads
Signature du Terroir, a security tool to "fingerprint" your system to be able to check whether it is not compromised.
My EUROSPEECH2003 report (Dutch Only) and Picture Gallery.
A course on Taaltechnologien

Wilcoxon Matched Pairs Signed Ranks and Wilcoxon two sample tests. For a quick and dirty test for Windows, use these minimalist distributions of the Signed Ranks (pkzip) and both (tar/gzip, recommended) tests (<500 kB, includes dosperl from CPAN). To get the Signed Ranks test or both tests running, download and unzip any of them, move your data files to the directory, open a DOS window, cd to the directory and type:
```
> perl SRTest.pl data.txt
# OR
> perl WlcxTest.pl data.txt
```
Where 'data.txt' is the name of YOUR data file (or use this test file).
Works best in a complete Perl port, i.e., ActivePerl on windows.
To get Activestate running under windows 98, download the MS Installer and ActivePerl (MSI version, or use the 'AS package' download if you are brave), install it and download the Wilcoxon Matched Pairs Signed Ranks test into your data directory, e.g., inside the Perl directory. CD to your data directory and run (make sure you replace 'C:\Windows\Desktop\Perl' to point to your own Perl directory):
```
> C:\Windows\Desktop\Perl\bin\perl SRTest.pl data.txt
# OR
> C:\Windows\Desktop\Perl\bin\perl SRTest.pl data.txt > result.txt
```
inside a dos window.
Perl home page
Linux home page
Stochastic suprasegmentals: Relationships between redundancy, prosodic structure and care of articulation in spontaneous speech Matthew Aylett's thesis on redundancy

Publications

van Son, R.J.J.H., Wesseling, Wieneke, Sanders, Eric, van den Heuvel, Henk. "The IFADV corpus: A free dialog video corpus". Proceedings of LREC 2008, Marrakech, 2008. Presentation (pdf)
Van hamme, H. and van Son, R.J.J.H. (eds.) Proceedings of INTERSPEECH 2007, Antwerpen, 2007
Weenink, D., Chen, G., Chen, Z., de Konink, S., Vierkant, D., van Hagen, E., and van Son, R.J.J.H."Learning tone distinctions for Mandarin Chinese", Proceedings of INTERSPEECH 2007, Antwerpen, 2007, 950-953. And Poster (PDF)
Wesseling, W., van Son, R.J.J.H., and Pols, L.C.W."The influence of masking words on the prediction of TRPs in a shadowed dialog", Proceedings of INTERSPEECH 2007, Antwerpen, 2007, 816-819.
Escudero, E., Kastelein, J., Weiand, K., and van Son, R.J.J.H."Formal modelling of L1 and L2 perceptual learning: Computational linguistics versus machine learning", Proceedings of INTERSPEECH 2007, Antwerpen, 2007, 1008-1011.
Khalil Sima'an, Maarten de Rijke, Remko Scha and Rob van Son Eds. (2006). Proceedings of the Sixteenth Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands (I hardly did any work on this, but it does print my name on the cover)
Pols, L.C.W., and van Son R.J.J.H. (2006). "Speech Dynamics: Acoustic manifestations and perceptual consequences", In: Dynamics of Speech Production and Perception, P.Divenyi et al. (Eds.), IOS Press, 71-80.
Wesseling W., Pols, L.C.W., and van Son R.J.J.H. (2006). "On the Sufficiency and Redundancy of Pitch for TRP Projection", Proceedings of INTERSPEECH 2006, Pittsburgh 2402-2405 and Poster ( Stimulus Example)
van Son R.J.J.H., Wesseling W., and Pols, L.C.W. (2006). "Prominent Words as Anchors for TRP Projection", Proceedings of INTERSPEECH 2006, Pittsburgh, 465-468 and Poster ( Stimulus Example)
Odé, C. and Van Son, R.J.J.H. (guest eds.) (2005). "Special Issue in honor of Louis Pols", Speech Communication 47.
Son R.J.J.H. and Van Santen, J.P.H. (2005). "Duration and spectral balance of intervocalic consonants: A case for efficient communication", Speech Communication 47, 100-123.
Son R.J.J.H. (2005). "A study of pitch, formant, and spectral estimation errors introduced by three lossy speech compression algorithms", Acta Acustica united with Acustica 91 (4), 771-778.
Wesseling W. and van Son R.J.J.H. (2005). "Early Preparation of Experimentally Elicited Minimal Responses", Proceedings of 6th SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue, 11-18. and presentation
Wesseling W. and van Son R.J.J.H. (2005). "Timing of Experimentally Elicited Minimal Responses as Quantitative Evidence for the Use of Intonation in Projecting TRPs", Proceedings of INTERSPEECH 2005, Lisbon, 3389-3392 and poster
R.J.J.H. Van Son, Olga Bolotova, Mietta Lennes, Louis C.W. Pols (2004). Frequency Effects on Vowel Reduction in Three Typologically Different Languages (Dutch, Finnish, Russian), Proceedings of INTERSPEECH 2004, Jeju Island, South Korea, 1277-1280.
Jelske Dijkstra, R.J.J.H. van Son, and Louis C.W. Pols (2004). Frisian TTS, an Example of Bootstrapping TTS for minority Languages , 5th ISCA Speech Synthesis Workshop, 14th-16th June 2004, Carnegie Mellon University
Van Son, R.J.J.H. and Pols, L.C.W. (2003). "How efficient is speech?", Proceedings of the Institute of Phonetic Sciences 25, 171-184. (corrected version with equation 2)
Van Son, R.J.J.H. and Pols, L.C.W. (2003). "Information Structure and Efficiency in Speech Production", Proceedings of EUROSPEECH2003, Geneva, Switzerland, 769-772.
Our Poster
Van Son, R.J.J.H. and Pols, L.C.W. (2003). "An Acoustic Model of Communicative Efficiency in Consonants and Vowels taking into Account Context Distinctiveness", Proceedings of ICPhS, Barcelona, Spain, 2141-2144.
Van Son, R.J.J.H. and Pols, L.C.W. (2002). "Evidence for Efficiency in vowel production", Proceedings of ICSLP2002, Denver, USA, Vol I, 37-40.
Van Son, R.J.J.H. (2002b). "Can standard analysis tools be used on decompressed speech?", Paper presented at the COCOSDA2002 meeting, Denver (URL:http://www.cocosda.org/meet/denver/COCOSDA2002-Rob.pdf).
Pols, L.C.W. & Van Son, R.J.J.H. (2002). "Accessing the IFA-corpus", In: Book in honor of the 70-th anniversary of Prof. L.V. Bondarko, N.B. Volskaya, N.D. Svetozarova (Eds.), University of St. Petersburg, 316-320.
Van Son, R.J.J.H & Pols, L.C.W. (2001d). "The IFA Corpus: A phonemically segmented Dutch "Open Source" speech Database" Proceedings of the Institute of Phonetic Sciences of the University of Amsterdam 24, 15-26.
Van Son, R.J.J.H & Pols, L.C.W. (2001c). "Phoneme recognition as a function of task and context", Proceedings of the Institute of Phonetic Sciences of the University of Amsterdam 24, 27-38.
Van Son, R.J.J.H & Pols, L.C.W. (2001b). "Structure and access of the open source IFA Corpus", Proceedings of the IRCS workshop on Linguistic Databases, Philadelphia, 245-253.
Van Son, R.J.J.H., Binnenpoorte, D., van den Heuvel, H. and Pols, L.C.W. (2001) "The IFA corpus: a phonemically segmented Dutch Open Source speech database", Proc. EUROSPEECH 2001, Aalborg, Denmark, Vol. 3, 2051-2054.
Van Son, R.J.J.H & Pols, L.C.W. (2001a). Phoneme recognition as a function of task and context, SPRAAC workshop, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, 25-30. PDF Postscript
Slides: PDF Postscript
Van Son, R.J.J.H, Streefkerk, B.M. & Pols, L.C.W. (2000). "An acoustic profile of speech efficiency", Proceedings of ICSLP2000, Beijing,, China, IV 97-100.
Van Son, R.J.J.H. & Pols, L.C.W. (1999). Effects of stress and lexical structure on speech efficiency, Proceedings Eurospeech99, Budapest, 439-442.
Van Son, R.J.J.H. & Pols, L.C.W. (1999). Perisegmental speech improves consonant and vowel identification. Speech Communication 29, 1-22.
Van Son, R.J.J.H. & Pols, L.C.W. (1999). An acoustic profile of consonant reduction. Speech Communication 28, 125-140.
Van Son, R.J.J.H., Koopmans-van Beinum, F.J. & Pols, L.C.W. (1998). Efficiency as an organizing principle of natural speech, Proceedings ICSLP'98, Sydney.
Van Son, R.J.J.H. & Van Santen, J.P.H. (1997). Word-level prosodical marking of consonant duration and spectral balance, Proceedings of the Institute of Phonetic Sciences of the University of Amsterdam 21, 21-36.
Van Son, R.J.J.H. & Van Santen, J.P.H. (1997). Strong interaction between factors influencing consonant duration, Proceedings Eurospeech97, Rhodos, 319-322.
Van Son, R.J.J.H. & Pols, L.C.W. (1997). The correlation between consonant identification and the amount of acoustic consonant reduction, Proceedings Eurospeech97, Rhodos, 2135-2138.
Van Son, R.J.J.H. & Pols, L.C.W. (1996). A comparison between the acoustics of vowel and consonant reduction , Proceedings of the Institute of Phonetic Sciences of the University of Amsterdam 20, 13-25.
Van Son, R.J.J.H. & Pols, L.C.W. (1996). An acoustic profile of consonant reduction, Proceedings of ICSLP 96, Philadelphia, USA, 1529-1532.
Van Son, R.J.J.H. & Pols, L.C.W. (1995). Acoustic consonant reduction: A comparison, Proceedings of the Institute of Phonetic Sciences of the University of Amsterdam 19, 83-91.
Van Son, R.J.J.H. (1995). The relation between the error distribution and the error rate in identification experiments, Proceedings of the Institute of Phonetic Sciences of the University of Amsterdam 19, 71-82.
Van Son, R.J.J.H. & Pols, L.C.W. (1995). How transitions and local context affect segment identification, Proceedings of the Institute of Phonetic Sciences of the University of Amsterdam 19, 51-69.
Van Son, R.J.J.H.(1995). A method to quantify the error distribution in confusion matrices, Proceedings Eurospeech95, Madrid, 2277-2280.
Van Son, R.J.J.H. & Pols, L.C.W. (1995). What does consonant reduction look like, if it exists, Proceedings Eurospeech95, Madrid, 1909-1912.
Van Son, R.J.J.H. & Pols, L.C.W. (1995). The influence of local context on the identification of vowels and consonants, Proceedings Eurospeech95, Madrid, 967-970.
Van Son, R.J.J.H. (1994). A method to quantify the error distribution in confusion matrices, Proceedings of the Institute of Phonetic Sciences of the University of Amsterdam 18, 41-63.
Pols, L.C.W. & Van Son, R.J.J.H. (1993). Acoustics and perception of dynamic vowel segments. Speech Communication 13, 135-147.
Van Son, R.J.J.H. (1993). Vowel perception: A closer look at the literature, Proceedings of the Institute of Phonetic Sciences of the University of Amsterdam 17, 33-64.
Van Son, R.J.J.H. (1993). Spectro-temporal features of vowel segments. In series: Studies of language and language use, IFOTT3, PhD thesis, University of Amsterdam.
Van Son, R.J.J.H. & Pols, L.C.W. (1992). Formant movements of Dutch vowels in a text, read at normal and fast rate. J. Acoust.Soc.Am. 92, 121-127.
Van Son, R.J.J.H. & Pols, L.C.W. (1990). Formant frequencies of Dutch vowels in a text, read at normal and fast rate. J. Acoust.Soc.Am. 88, 1683-1693.

Curriculum Vitae

Born in 1960, in Nijmegen. Studied Biology at Nijmegen University from 1978-1984. Obtained my PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 1993 (Spectro-temporal features of vowel segments). Worked on NWO Post-Doc projects on consonant reduction from 1993-1997 and on speech efficiency from 1999-2002.

Contact information

Rob van Son
Institute of Phonetic Sciences
Fac. Humanities, University of Amsterdam
Herengracht 338
1016 CG Amsterdam, The Netherlands
email:
tel: +31 (0)205252183
fax: +31 (0)205252197
WWW: http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/rob

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