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Units
This program is offered only to continuing students. No new admissions will be accepted.
Core Units
SLP801: Fundamentals of Speech Science I
Convenor: Dr. Felicity
Cox
Credit Points: 4
Prerequisites: none
Availability: Semester 1
This unit examines articulatory phonetics, phonetic transcription and speech prosody as well as fundamental phonological topics of relevance to research in speech science. Students who have already studied equivalent topics will be given more advanced topics.
SLP815: Fundamentals of Speech Science II
Convenor:Dr Robert Mannell
Credit Points: 4
Prerequisites: none
Availability: Semester 1
This unit examines basic acoustics, resonance, and the acoustics of speech production. It particularly focuses on the acoustics of vocal sound sources, vowels, consonants and prosody. Students who have already studied equivalent topics will be given more advanced topics.
SLP804: Research Methods in Speech and Language Processing
Convenor: Dr Robert Mannell
Credit Points: 4
Prerequisites: none
Availability: Semester 1
A prerequisite to the Research Project, this unit offers advice on the selection and design of the project as well as how the results should be reported. Evaluation of the unit is based on a proposal for the Research project to be carried out in semester II.
SLP813: Project in Speech and Language Processing I
Convenor: Dr. Felicity Cox and Dr Robert Mannell
Credit Points: 4
Prerequisites: SLP804
Availability: Semesters 1 and 2
A major research project on a topic relating to the course material. Students will be encouraged to develop original ideas and implement working models where appropriate. Possible 2006 projects are now available on the SLP813 web site.
SLP814: Project in Speech and Language Processing II
Convenor: Dr. Felicity Cox and Dr Robert Mannell
Credit Points: 4
Prerequisites: SLP804
Prerequisites: SLP813 (may be taken as a corequisite by full-time students)
Availability: Semesters 1 and 2
This unit is a continuation of the research project commenced in SLP814. Part-time and distance students will usually take this unit in the semester following SLP813. Full-time students will usually take this unit at the same time as SLP813. SLP813 and SLP814 together represent an 8 credit point research project. A good grade (D or HD) in such an 8 credit point research project meets the minimum requirements for admission to a research degree such as the M.Phil. or the Ph.D.
Optional Units
SLP802: Programming for Speech and Language Processing
Convenor: Dr Robert Mannell
Credit Points: 4
Prerequisites: none
Availability: Semester 1 (on-campus and distance)
Students who already have the equivalent of ITEC100 or COMP125 will not be admitted to this unit.
A basic grounding in programming. Modules cover Python programming for text processing, Splus for statistics and data visualisation.
SLP803: An Introduction to Language Technology
Convenor: Dr Rolf Schwitter and Dr Diego Molla-Aliod (convenors in 2008)
Credit Points: 4
Prerequisites: ITEC100 or COMP125 or equivalent or SLP802
Availability: Semester 2 (distance only) - Only offered in even numbered years (ie. 2008)
Whilst this unit is only available in distance-mode, it can be taken by both on-campus and distance-mode students.
This unit has the same content as COMP248 Introduction to Natural Language Processing, and the link above is to the COMP248 web page. This unit cannot be taken by students who have already completed COMP248 or equivalent.
Upon successful completion of this unit, students should have:
- the techniques that are required for the computer processing of natural language text
- how these are used for tasks such as database query and machine translation.
SLP811: Dialog Systems
Convenor: To be advised.
Credit Points: 4
Prerequisites: SLP803 (or COMP248 or equivalent)
Availability: Semester 2 (distance only) - Only offered in odd numbered years (eg. 2009)
Whilst this unit is only available in distance-mode, it can be taken by both on-campus and distance-mode students.
This unit has the same content as COMP349 Interactive Natural Language Systems, and the link above is to the COMP349 web page. This unit cannot be taken by students who have already completed COMP349 or equivalent.
Upon successful completion of this unit, students should have:
- an understanding of the techniques required to build open domain question answering (QA) systems and spoken language dialog systems
- an appreciation of the limitations of open domain QA approaches, AI-based approaches, and spoken language dialogue systems
- an awareness of the issues in dialogue design, prompt design and grammar writing, and of the importance of error recovery techniques
- practical ability in implementing a real QA system and a spoken language dialogue system
SLP816: Speech Processing Topic I
Convenors: Dr. Felicity Cox and Dr Robert Mannell
Credit Points: 4
Prerequisites: SLP801 and SLP805 (may be taken as a corequisite by full-time students)
Availability: Semester 1 (on-campus and distance)
An advanced speech processing topic selected from the list of topics below.
SLP817: Speech Processing Topic II
Convenors: Dr. Felicity Cox and Dr Robert Mannell
Credit Points: 4
Prerequisites: SLP801 and SLP805
Availability: Semester 2 (on-campus and distance)
An advanced speech processing topic selected from the list of topics below.
SLP818: Speech Processing Topic II
Convenors: Dr. Felicity Cox and Dr Robert Mannell
Credit Points: 4
Prerequisites: SLP801 and SLP805
Availability: Semester 2 (on-campus and distance)
An advanced speech processing topic selected from the list of topics below.
Advanced Speech Processing Topics
These topics cover the areas of phonetics and phonology and speech technology. No prior computing background is assumed as prerequisites for these topics although in some options (eg. speech recognition) training will be provided in the necessary computation skills.
Advanced speech processing topics may vary from semester to semester depending upon availability of the relevant staff member. Topics may include:-
- Australian English Phonetics and Phonology
- Speech Physiology
- Speech Perception and Psychoacoustics
- Text-to-speech and speech synthesis (similar content to the discontinued unit SLP807)
- Speech recognition (similar content to the discontinued unit SLP806)
- Advanced Phonetics and Phonology Reading Course
- Phonetics and Phonology of Second Language Acquisition
Speech Processing and Language Processing Specialisations
Whilst there are no official majors in this degree, it is possible for students to choose a program which more strongly emphasises either Speech Processing or Language Processing.
Speech Processing Specialisation
Students taking this specialisation will typically take the five core units PLUS all three of SLP816, SLP817 and SLP818.
Language Processing Specialisation
Students taking this specialisation will typically take the five core units plus SLP802, SLP803 and SLP811. Students who already have the equivalent of SLP802 will only take SLP803 and SLP811 and will additionally take one of SLP816, SLP817 and SLP818. Because of the rotation of SLP803 and SLP811 offerings it is only possible to complete this specialisation part-time and how long this will take will depend upon whether you commence the degree in an odd or even numbered year (see notes above on SLP803 and SLP811).
Programs intermediate to these two options are also possible.