Ailbhe Ní Chasaide

Professor of Phonetics and

Director of Research

Research Interests

My research embraces three interrelated strands, and I work with a research group at the Phonetics and Speech Laboratory (see www.tcd.ie/slscs/clcs/psl/#projects). One strand explores the prosody of the voice(e.g., part of the FastNet project) – examining how tone-of-voice and melody,combine to convey both linguistic and paralinguistic (affective and attitudinal) information. I also research the segmental and prosodic structure of Irish dialects (e.g., Prosody of Irish Dialects project). Building on these strands, I am developing speech resources and speech synthesis for Irish (e.g., ABAIR project) exploring its application in education (CabairE project) and in providing access for the visually impaired.

Selected Publications

Towards personalised synthesis-based content in Irish (Gaelic) language education, in Proceedings Speech and Language Technology in Education SLaTE Venice, 2011 [A. Ní Chasaide, Ní Chiaráin, N., Wendler, C., Berthelsen, H., Kelly, A., Gilmartin, E., Ní Dhonnchadha, E. and Gobl, C. ]
Voice source dynamics in intonation, in Proceedings of the 7th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVII), Hong Kong, China, 2011, pp. 1470-1473 [A. Ní Chasaide, Yanushevskaya, I. and Gobl, C.]
Voice source variation and its communicative functions, in W.Hardcastle, J.Laver and F. Gibbon (eds.), The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences (Second Edition), Oxford, Blackwell, 2010, pp. 378 - 423, [C. Gobl, and Ní Chasaide, A.]
Melodic alignment and micro-dialect variation in Connaught Irish, in C. Gussenhoven & T. Riad (eds.), Tones and Tunes: Studies in Word and Sentence Prosody, Vol. 2, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 2007, pp. 293-315. [M. Dalton and Ní Chasaide, A]
Tonal alignment in Irish Dialects Language and Speech, 48, (4), 2006, pp. 441 – 464. [M.Dalton and Ní Chasaide, A]
Speech Technology for Minority Languages: the Case of Irish (Gaelic), Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, INTERSPEECH, Pittsburgh, 2006, pp. 181 – 184. [A. Ní Chasaide, Wogan, J., Ó Raghallaigh, B., Ní Bhriain, Á., Zoerner, E., Berthelsen, H. and Gobl, C.]
The role of voice quality in communicating emotion, mood and attitude, Speech Communication, 40, (1-2), 2003, pp. 189 – 212 [C. Gobl and Ní Chasaide, A].
Estimating lingual constriction location in high vowels: a comparison of EMA and EPG based measures, Journal of Phonetics, 30, 2002 pp. 397-415. [L. Fitzpatrick and Ní Chasaide, A]
Irish. in Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 111-116. [A. Ní Chasaide]
Contextual variation of the vowel voice source as a function of adjacent consonants. Language and Speech 36, Vol. 2-3, 1993, pp. 303-330. [A. Ní Chasaide and Gobl, C]

Teaching

My teaching is laboratory based and uses acoustic, articulatory and aerodynamic techniques to give students an understanding of how speech is produced and perceived, as well as practical skills in analysing the segmental and prosodic structure of languages. Teaching is, where appropriate, linked to the Lab’s ongoing research projects. I teach undergraduates taking the B.A (Mod) in Computing and Language and the B.Sc in Clinical Language. At postgraduate level, I teach on the MPhil programmes in Linguistics and in Speech and Language Processing. I direct PhD research in all areas of my research.