Browsing by Author "Sirisena, H."

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Automatic Segmentation Of Given Set Of Sinhala Text Into Syllables For Speech Synthesis
(University of Kelaniya, 2007) Kumara, K.H.; Dias, N.G.J.; Sirisena, H.
A dictionary based automatic syllabification tool has been given for Speech Synthesis in Sinhala language. This tool is also capable of providing frequency distributions of Vowels, Consonants and Syllables for a given set of Sinhala text. A method of determining syllable boundaries has also been shown. Detection of Syllable boundaries for a given Sinhala sentence is achieved by four main phases and those phases have been described with examples. Rules for the automatic segmentation of words into syllables have been derived based on a dictionary. An algorithm has been produced for the implementation of these rules which utilizes the dictionary together with an accurate mark up of the syllable boundaries.
Department of Modern Languages
(Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2008) Sirisena, H.
Evolution of ancient Russian wedding rites, customs and traditions
(Department of Modern Languages, Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Sirisena, H.
The genre of play ‘Cherry Orchard’
(Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2009) Sirisena, H.
Phonetic Reasons and Phonological Consequences of Homogeneous speech sounds
(University of Kelaniya, 2008) Sirisena, H.
The expositiOn about homogeneous or heterogeneous sounds appear rather conventional, as far as, absolute homogeneous speech sounds do not exist: changes in duration (time) for natural speech signal, defined by the same environment of the source of the signal, so natural, like naturally absence of absolute immobility in any live system. Traditional phonetic exposition about three phase in sound articulation-onset (beginning), retentions and release assume in obvious or unobvious aspect, that the retention characterizes with some invariable condition of articulatory organs and acoustically itself corresponds to the stationary part of sound that appear as most representative character of it. Actually those expositions are conventional or they are based on mostly observing separate sound articulation or syllables or such speech that can be named '"Laboratory". It is noticeable that the phase of retention can not be considered as the most characteristic of sound for ever. So all obstruent (stop) consonants differ in their articulation from the active organ that makes the closure (occlusion) and acoustically and perceptively differ according to articulation of transitional elements of neighboring vowels and according to the onset (beginning). Nevertheless, the effort to characterize every sound as sequence of three phases seems to be rather conventional, especially in text book of phonetic. Appearances of connected spontaneous speech disprove those expositions. Strictly, describing every sound as homogeneous seems to be conventional and further in narration can be implied inverted commas, in defining sounds as homogeneous. Only in describing phonological properties of monophthongs with contrastive diphthongs or polypthongs, that term has direct meaning. Heterogeneous vowels and consonants can be characterized from different points of view: articulatorily, acoustically and perceptionally. The reasons of heterogeneous can be divided into several groups: 1. The heterogeneity is defined by the system of phoneme itself. For example; • According to their articulation heterogeneous consonant stops are contrasted with homogeneous fricatives. • Heterogeneous diphthongs are contrasted with homogeneous monophthong. The characteristic changes of articulation during the realization appear as a phonological sign and disappearance of such heterogeneity evaluate as a important appearance of the sound system. Lot of research works are devoted to process of spirantsation of stop consonants in various languages or monpthongisation of diphthongs. Use of heterogeneity in phonological systems is almost universal, but the degree of implication can be vivid. There are lot of languages, where there is no diphthongs in the form of independent phonological unit, the number of stops and fricatives are not equal in the presence of various active organs. It is practiced on a large scale, the systems of consonants, where lack labial back lingual affricates. 2. Heterogeneity is caused due to features of articulatory base and it does not possess phonological value. Diphthongness of [0] and [I] maybe appear as a orphophonic sign, that can be judged about sociolinguistic sign of the informant and its form of dialect or language affiliation. This phonologically opaque heterogeneity can have different reasons. So it can be assumed that realization of [U] shape onset- distinctive compensation of weak articulation that bring to following considerable. opening and delabialization of vowel [ o]. Diphthongness of heterogeneous [I] also can be described as an effort for most definite localization which has phonologically stipulated status. It is noticed that those properties presented only in basic allophones of vowels, and in the presence of combinative positional changes can be lost totally or partially. 3. Heterogeneity realizes as a result of phonetic conditions- quality of neighboring sounds, positions relating to stress etc. Most clear evidence for such heterogeneity is transitional part that arises during the articulation of vowels located close to consonants. As far as any palatalized consonant is pronounced when the front middle part of the tongue is raised and forwarded. The beginning of the articulation of the next vowel defined with that and every vowel begins with [I] shape transitional part. Duration of that articulation and the difference from its own articulation of the vowel is larger and more differ from basic allophones of vowel [I]. Of course, that part does not appear as a homogeneous and can be characterized as continuous motion of articulatory organs from [!]shape position to corresponding articulatory position of given vowel in phonetically independent position. Though that last position does not reach so far, especially in rather fast temp of speech. 4. Heterogeneity of articulation is a characteristic for sounds that possess short duration. In many occasions, reduction of duration of short vowels, lead to, that vowel articulate like overall transitional movement from the position that define preceding consonant, to the position, necessary to pronounce next consonant. However that type of articulatory heterogeneity can be met in pronunciation of stressed vowels, especially if surrounding consonants strongly differ in their characteristics. 5. About the consonants, also can be said about such combinative homogeneity. So an unvoiced consonant positioned after a vowel, partially characterizes with voiced parts and it needs big effect of articulatory organs. In that occasion vocal chords unable to stop their work to the starting moment of the articulation of unvoiced consonant. A consonant after a labialized vowel strongly delabializes in the middle of its own articulation. 6. Articulatory heterogeneity realizations bring to acoustic heterogeneity. It can be seen that, frequency of formant of such heterogeneous allophones characterizes with compulsory changes. Nature of changes in most cases predictable and can be described by the corresponding articulatory process. Keywords: homogeneous speech sounds, heterogeneous speech sounds
Some identified intonation patterns in Sinhala
(University of Kelaniya, 2008) Sirisena, H.
The Spectral Analysis of Sinhalese Vowel
(University of Kelaniya, 2005) Sirisena, H.
The objective of this study is to examine the traditional description of vowel articulation with their formant characteristics of instrumental analyses. Findings: 1. Vowels /i:/ and /¬:/do not differ in FI. It is possible to say, that they have the same degree of closeness; they are in fact the most closed vowels since they have the lowest FI among all the long vowels; 2. Vowel / :/ is the most open, its FI is the highest; vowels /e:/and /o:/ do not differ in FI and hence have the same degree of closeness, but not that much as vowels /e:/ and /¬:/ - their first formant is 448-363 Hz, but /i:/and /¬:/ have lower FI :284-240 Hz; 3. Vowel /«:/ follows vowels /e:/ and /o:/ in the degree of closeness; 4. Sinhalese long vowels are characterized by four degrees of rise, on the basis of the acoustic characteristics: Closed -/i:/ and /¬:/; Half-closed -/e:/and /o:/; Half-open -/«:/; Open -/ :/. 5. According to frequency values of the second formant, long vowels differ in the following manner: front vowels with a high second formant, for example, /i:/- (2648 Hz), /e:/ - (2575 Hz), /«:/ - (2101 Hz) and retreated vowels -/ :/, /o:/, /¬:/ have a lower FII (1215 Hz, 478 Hz, and 417 Hz accordingly). 6. According to frequency values of the first formant of short vowels, the most closed are vowels i ¬ their FI is 279 and 262 Hz, that is almost equal. Also nearly the same were FI frequencies for vowels / / and /o/, it is the next lower degree of closeness of vowels (their FI is 478and 345 Hz accordingly). Vowels « , by their average data, are equally open vowels. 7. Values of the second formant testify that the most protruded vowels are /i e and more retreated are o thus vowel / / appeared most backward and the most protruded in the group of short vowels was / /. 8. In frequency values short and long monophthongs almost do not differ. 9. In frequency values diphthongs differ from monophthongs in the second components. 10. According to the acoustic classification the Sinhalese vowels may be characterized as follows: Compact vowels- / :/, / /; diffusive- /i:/, /i/, /e:/, /e/, /«:/, /«/; Low - /¬:/, /¬/, /o:/, /o/; high - /i:/, /i/, /e:/, /e/, /«:/, /«/; Flat - /¬:/, /¬/, /o:/, /o/; simple- / É/, / /, /iÉ/, /i /, /e:/, /e/, /«É/, / /;
A tool for automatic segmentation of a given Sinhala text into Syllables for Speech synthesis and Speech recognition
(University of Kelaniya, 2006) Kumara, K.H.; Dias, N.G.J.; Sirisena, H.
In the present era of human computer interaction, the educationally under privileged and the rural communities of Sri Lanka are being deprived of technologies that pervade the growing interconnected web of computers and communications. One good solution for this problem would be computers talking to the common man in the language he is comfortable to communicate in. Sri Lankan population has a significant percentage of people who are educationally under-privileged. On one hand we claim that to build an EGovernment or an E-Society in Sri Lanka on the other hand, the advances we make are totally inaccessible by a large number of people in Sri Lanka. Under such circumstances, we cannot expect rural/educationally under-privileged people to use computers and IT products unless we remove the need of being literate, which exists as a barrier between them and computers. However, the interaction between the computer and the user is largely through keyboard and screen-oriented systems. In the current Sri Lankan context, this restricts the usage of computers to a miniscule fraction of the population, who are both computer-literate and conversant with written English. In order to enable a wider proportion of population to benefit from Information technology, there is a dire need for an interface other than keyboard and screen-interface that is widely in use at present. Speech technologies promise to be the next generation user interface. Software applications having speech and voice recognition abilities have a better chance to communicate with a large percentage of population which include educationally underprivileged, visually challenged and computer illiterates, if these applications can speak and understand the native language. It is well known that the transcription of orthographic words into syllables is one of the principal steps of a syllable based Speech synthesis and Speech recognition. Hence we put forward a dictionary based automatic syllabification tool for Speech Synthesis and Automatic Speech Recognition in Sinhala language. Also it is capable to provide the frequency distributions of Vowels, Consonants and Syllables of given Sinhala text. Although there is no universal agreement for syllable definition, in this research our syllable definition can be considered as Cn 0 V n 1 Cn 0 where Cn 0 signifies 0 to n consonants and V n 1 signifies 1 to n vowels. In this tool, detection of Syllable boundaries for a given Sinhala sentence is achieved by four main phases: (1) Reformat everything encountered (e.g. digits, abbreviations) into words and punctuation.(2) Derive a phonemic representation for each word. (3) Determine the C n 0 V n 1 units for a given word. (4) Reformat above Cn 0 V n 1 units according to the Cn 0 V n 1 Cn 0 definition in order to obtain the syllable boundaries. Following example will give a better explanation of the algorithm.
Verbal stress (Accent) in Sinhala language
(University of Kelaniya, 2009) Sirisena, H.
A Visual Management System for Universities - A CASE STUDY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KELANIYA, SRI LANKA
(University of Kelaniya, 2006) Sirisena, H.; Hewawitanagamage, U.R.; Munasinghe, J.; Sakalasooriya, N.; Kalansooriya, J.
Expansion of the boundaries of human knowledge is the key to enhance the quality of civilizations. Knowledge results in systems. Systems, in turn, make better environments where human beings could maintain high standards of life. We all are aware of the famous saying of Munidasa Kumarathunga, the renowned Grammarian of Sinhala language and patriotic, which states that "A nation cannot achieve success unless new discoveries are made." (alut alut de notanana jaatiya lova nonagi). When we were students we had to face lots of difficulties within the university premises, due to lack of a proper system of visual management. When we became members of the staff as academics and administrative officers we faced more difficulties in regard to above mentioned matter. We experienced this problem specially, when a new batch of students enters the university. Also, in the recent past various fee levying Postgraduate and Diploma courses have been introduced by our faculties and thousands of external students have been registered for undergraduate degrees at CODL. As such, we are in need of a systematic way to handle this mass who interacts with our various academic and administrative departments/branches in the University. When we undertook our Postgraduate Degrees in various foreign countries such as India, Russia, Germany and United Kingdom etc., we have been inspired by the visual management systems displayed by their universities. Certainly they are applying their knowledge to the betterment of their own society. These thoughts inspired us and as a result we have made an attempt to introduce a visual management system for our university. We hope that this kind of visual management system can be applied to any university.
A visual management system for universities: A case study of the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka
(Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, 2006) Sirisena, H.; Hewavithanagamage, U.R.; Munasinghe, J.; Sakalasooriya, N.; Jayantha, K.
Expansion of the boundaries of human knowledge is the key to enhance the quality of civilization. Knowledge results in system. Systems, in turn, make better environments where human beings could maintain high standards of life. We all are aware of the famous saying of Munidasa Kumarathunga, the renowned Grammarian of Sinhala language and patriotic, which state that “a nation cannot achieve success unless new discoveries are made.” (alut alut de notanana jaatiya lova nonage). When we were students we had to face lot of difficulties within the university premises, due to lack of a proper system of visual management. When we became members of the staff as academic and administrative officers we faced more difficulties in regard to above mentioned matter. We experienced this problem specially, when a new batch of students enter the university. Also, in the recent past various fee levying postgraduate and diploma courses have been introduced by our faculties and thousands of external students have been registered for undergraduate degree at CODL. As such, we are in need of a systematic way to handle this mass who interacts with our various academic and administrative departments/branches in the University. When we undertook our postgraduate degrees in various foreign countries such as India, Russia, Germany and United Kingdom etc. we have been inspired by the visual management systems displayed by their universities. Certainly they are applying their knowledge to the betterment of their own society. These thoughts inspired us and as a result we have made an attempt to introduce a visual management system for our university. We hope that this kind of visual management system can be applied to any university.
උච්චාරණ පර්යේෂණ විධි
(Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2010) Sirisena, H.