Subject: Re: Do phonemes = sounds? From: Chris Stecker <cstecker(at)UMICH.EDU> Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 15:48:48 -0700So how does one recognize a nonsense syllable like "oob?" Is it in the dictionary? Or would you say I can hear and repeat it, but not recognize which phonemes it contains? -Chris On Monday 06 June 2005 2:00 pm, Mark Huckvale wrote: > Richard H. wrote: > >So what's "the truth" here? Can computers create and/or recognise phomemes > > .. or is the notation too abstract? > > I think if you take a pragmatic definition of a phoneme as something > that is used > in a pronunciation dictionary, then it is pretty clear that speech > recognisers can > recognise phonemes. However they do so not by recognising elementary > "sounds" > but by finding the word which best explains the input acoustic signal. > And they do > that using the dictionary sequence of phonemes for the word and a set of > acoustic > models which estimate the probability of different acoustic realisations > of those > phonemes. So it is only after the word is recognised that the system > knows which > phonemes it has recognised. > > Sorry, that came out more technical than I'd hoped ... > > Mark > -- > > Mark Huckvale, Director MSc Speech and Hearing Science > Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London > www.phon.ucl.ac.uk