Multi-lingual Interoperability in Speech Technology (MIST) September 13-14, 1999 Leusden, The Netherlands

SCoPE, Syllable Core and Periphery Evaluation: Automatic Syllabification and Application to Foreign Accent Identification

Kay Berkling (1), Julie Vonwiller (2), Chris Cleirigh (2)

(1) M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, MA, USA
(2) Dept. of Elect. Eng., University of Sydney, Australia

In this paper we apply a study of the structure of the English language towards an automatic syllabifi- cation algorithm. Elements of syllable structure are defined according to both their position in the syllable and to the position of the syllable within word structure. Elements of syllable structure that only occur at morpheme boundaries or that extend for the duration of morphemes are identified as peripheral elements; those that can occur anywhere with regard to word morphology are identified as core elements. All languages potentially make a distinction between core and peripheral elements of their syllable structure, however the specific forms these structures take will vary from language to language. In addition to problems posed by differences in phoneme inventories, we expect speakers with the greatest syllable structural differences between native and foreign language to have greatest difficulty with pronunciation in the foreign language. In this paper we will analyse two accents of Australian English: Arabic whose core/periphery structure is similar to English and Vietnamese, whose structure is maximally different to English.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Berkling, Kay / Vonwiller, Julie / Cleirigh, Chris (1999): "SCoPE, syllable core and periphery evaluation: automatic syllabification and application to foreign accent identification", In MIST-1999.