The Solution of Some Fundamental Problems in Mechanical Speech Recognition

Abstract

This paper offers a theoretical treatment of the main problems that arise in mechanical speech recognition, based on the conclusions reached in experiments on the perception and recognition of speech sounds and on experimental results already obtained with a mechanical recognizer. In the first part of the paper, the problems of primary or acoustic recognition are dealt with; they include the “gating” problem, the choice of recognition units, and the acoustic recognition of different classes of speech sound—vowels, plosive consonants, fricative consonants and periodic continuants. The second part discusses the use of language statistics in mechanical recognition.