On Wednesday, November 28, 2007, at 05:44AM, "Michael Dalton" <mdaltonariel=
> wrote:>
> I welcome discussion about this topic and respectfully submit the follow=
ing in response to Dan?s skepticism
I can only offer a similarity I encountered with a good friend's project to=
design a voice synthesis system for bus announcements in a major metropoli=
tan area - some computer voices sound like words and some don't, some sound=
like people and some don't quite...
I don't spend time with captive talking birds, but the "imitation" human vo=
ice is an interesting topic. Having a computer imitate human speech is one =
thing, and somewhere in discussions I imagined busses with birds on board t=
hat would announce upcoming stops and maybe entertain passengers... But I g=
uess that could only happen in the tropics if at all (or in cartoons)!
In a past studio job, one fo the things we did was to record people making =
those computer answering messages, and individual words for reconstruction =
by computers - it was so easy to start sounding fake. Some birds do better!
Essentially to me there is no difference between "sounds like" a word and "=
is" a word. We have no idea what is going on in the birdbrain, and whether =
or not it is meaning or stimulus response can be debated, but both sides th=
ink they are right... so not very productive as a discussion! And as a voic=
e editor, I have to restrain myself from correcting people's live speech, D=
arn perfectionism!
Now, if a nature recordists captured the sounds of a WILD bird talking, tha=
t would be something to remark on.
Do any bird owners find their animals imitating figures of speech without b=
eing taught by long repetition?
Lou
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