Browsing by Author "Witten, I.H."

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    MAN-MACHINE SYSTEMS LABORATORY REPORT
    (1978-02-01) Hill, D.R.; Witten, I.H.; Jassem, W.
    The paper reports a statistical study that has been carried out in an attempt to gain insight into the nature and underlying causes of rhythm in spoken British English. Two sets of utterances were selected as specially suited to the study, being both widely available as published audio tapes and spoken carefully in an attempt to exemplify normal spoken British English for the benefit of foreign students of the language [Study Units 30 and 39 from M.A.K. Halliday, A Course in Spoken English: Intonation (Oxford University, Oxford, 1970)]. Segmental analysis were performed and the resulting data on segment durations together with additional (higher level) information were prepared for computer analysis. It was found that, although there was some tendency towards isochrony (equally timed rhythmic units), constraints of isochrony accounted for at most 10% of the durational structure of the rhythmic units. Much of the rhythmic structure (about 45%) is adequately accounted for by the mean durations of the constituent phonemes. Other factors play a minor role. [Work supported by the National Research Council of Canada].
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    ON THE POWER OF TRAPS AND DIVERSIONS IN A DOCUMENTPREPARATION LANGUAGE
    (1981-05-01) Witten, I.H.; Bonham, M.; Strong, E.
    This note illustrates the power of software interrupts (traps) and text diversions in document preparation languages by considering three difficult problems in typesetting: figure placement; setting text in arbitrary shapes; and balancing final columns in multi-column layout. The solution of each of these in the \fBnroff\fR document preparation system is discussed, and an Appendix gives the \fBnroff\fR macros which accomplish the task.
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    THE STABILITY OF LINEAR PREDICTIVE DESCRIPTIONS OF CURVES USED IN HANDWRITING
    (1981-02-01) Ha, Y.K.; Witten, I.H.
    The technique of signal analysis by adaptive predictive filtering has previously been extended to the case of multi-dimensional signals, and it has been conjectured that this might be used to analyze handwriting as a cycloidal curve which is modulated to form the letter shapes. Although a second-order two-dimensional filter can model cycloids, the analysis procedure becomes unstable, and we show how differencing the input and applying a first-order filter rectifies this problem.
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    SUPPRESSING LIMIT CYCLE IN DIGITAL INCREMENTAL COMPUTERS
    (1981-02-01) Witten, I.H.; McCrea, P.G.
    This correspondence examines the sources of limit cycle oscillations in Digital Incremental Computers and proposes several different methods for their suppression. A theoretical analysis is performed based on considering the effects of noise injected at the truncation points of the system and the results are verified by extensive simulation.