Anja Belz,
SRI Cambridge
Multi-Syllable Phonotactic Models
In this talk I will describe an approach to constructing phonotactic
models for use e.g. as linguistic knowledge components in speech
recognition. The underlying theoretical approach is based on the
multi-syllable hypothesis which holds that syllable phonotactics vary
considerably in correlation with a range of factors that include, but
are not limited to, a syllable's position within a word and relative
to primary stress, and that such variations cannot adequately be
captured by standard single-syllable approaches. I will describe
a finite-state formalism that facilitates automatic model construction
and generalisation, and show how it can be used to construct
multi-syllable phonotactic models from data sets of German, English
and Dutch phonological words.