Re: Wrod Ilntilitgelibiy wtih Pnoheme Cufisonon

[David Klein <kleinsound@xxxxxxxxx>]

Good point about the complexity involved in implementing a realistic vowel switch.

I would hypothesize there are cases where binaural release from masking could help preserve the perceptual categorization of certain consonants relative to certain vowels in reverberant environments.

Perhaps one way to tease this apart would be to study how entire word intelligibility of different words degrades as a function of the phonemic content and environmental conditions.

I received many responses to my query. I'm working to digest these and summarize them to the list.

Regards,
David

> On Aug 16, 2014, at 8:46 AM, Abeer Alwan <alwan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I think it would be difficult to come up with a 'realistic' noisy situation wherein the vowels are distorted and not the consonants, since vowels have more energy (except perhaps at high frequencies relative to some fricatives). Whispered speech is another story. Also not clear how one would manipulate the vowels, since different vowels would result in different formant transitions to and from neighbouring consonants.
> 
> Regards,
> Abeer
> 
>> On Aug 14, 2014, at 21:59, David Klein <kleinsound@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> 
>>      Hi All,
>> 
>>      I am seeking references on the subject of human speech
>>      intelligibility as a function of individual phoneme distortions.
>>      I can't seem to find what I'm looking for. Can anybody help
>>      point me in the right direction?
>> 
>>      I'd specifically like to know how word intelligibility holds up
>>      when distortions of a particular phoneme class would cause
>>      members of that class to be highly confusable when presented in
>>      isolation.
>> 
>>      More generally, I wonder how well humans can do when consonants
>>      are relatively clear but vowels are highly ambiguous.
>> 
>>      I suppose two ways this might have been studied would have been
>>      using, on the one hand, noise or channel distortions
>>      specifically targeted to distorting certain phoneme classes; or,
>>      on the other hand, manipulating the signal by switching certain
>>      phonemes to other perceptually nearby phonemes.
>> 
>>      Cheers,
>>      Dvaid ;)
> 
> -- 
> 
> Abeer Alwan, Prof.
> Dept. of Electrical Engineering
> Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science
> 66-147G Engr. IV, UCLA
> 405 Hilgard Ave., Box 951594
> Los Angeles, CA 90095-1594
> phone: (310) 206-2231, fax: (310) 206-4685
> email: alwan@xxxxxxxxxxx        http://www.ee.ucla.edu/~spapl