A phonetically based approach to speech recognition uses speech specific knowledge obtained from phonotactics, phonology and acoustic phonetics to capture relevant phonetic information. Thus, a recognition system based on this approach can make broad classiflcations as well as detailed phonetic distinctions. This paper discusses a framework for developing a phonettcally based recognition system...

In this paper, a general framework of acoustic-phonetic modelling is developed. Context sensitive rules are incorporated into a knowledge-based automatic speech recognition (ASR) system and are assessed with control based on fuzzy decision making. The reliability measure is outlined: a tests collection is run and a confusion matrix is built for each rule. During the recognition procedure the fu...

Accent perception is only partly due to local phonetic cues. Moreover, global phonetic patterns as well as signal-external top-down knowledge play an important role. The presented experiment continues this line of research and provides evidence for German that the perceived local accent position is affected by a global factor which is central for speech, but which has not been addressed so far:...

Title of dissertation: STATISTICAL KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING IN PHONOLOGY Ewan Michael Dunbar, Doctor of Philosophy, 2013 Dissertation directed by: Professor William Idsardi Department of Linguistics This dissertation deals with the theory of the phonetic component of grammar in a formal probabilistic inference framework: (1) it has been recognized since the beginning of generative phonology that ...

Phonological grammars try to represent speakers’ knowledge so that the ‘natural’ behavior of speech sounds becomes self-evident. Phonetic models have the same goals but have no psychological pretensions. Phonetic models succeed in explaining the natural behavior of speech, whereas phonological representations largely fail. The ‘phonetic naturalness’ requirement in phonological grammars should b...

The end-result of perceptual reorganization in infancy is currently viewed as a reconfigured perceptual space, "warped" around native-language phonetic categories, which then acts as a direct perceptual filter on any non-native sounds: naïve-listener discrimination of non-native-sounds is determined by their mapping onto native-language phonetic categories that are acoustically/articulatorily m...

One of the first steps infants take in learning their native language is to discover its set of speech-sound categories. This early development is shown when infants begin to lose the ability to differentiate some of the speech sounds their language does not use, while retaining or improving discrimination of language-relevant sounds. However, this aspect of early phonological tuning is not suf...