Unit 5 Speech Processing

Q.1 what is speech Processing?

Ans: Speech processing in NLP, or Natural Language Processing, is all
about teaching computers to understand and work with human speech.
It's like training a computer to understand what people are saying when
they talk, just like you and I understand each other.

Here's how it works:

1. Speech Recognition: This is the first step. Computers need to convert

spoken words into text. Just like when you talk to your phone and it types
out what you're saying, that's speech recognition.
2. Speech Understanding: Once the computer has the text, it needs to
understand the meaning behind the words. This involves figuring out the
context, the intent, and the emotions behind the speech. For example, if
you say, "I'm feeling hot," the computer needs to understand that you're
probably talking about the temperature, not your attractiveness!
3. Speech Generation: This is the reverse of speech recognition. Here, the
computer turns text into speech. So, if you type something and your
computer reads it out loud to you, that's speech generation.
4. Speech Synthesis: This is similar to speech generation but involves
creating speech from scratch, often using recorded sounds or artificial
voices. You've probably heard these in things like GPS systems or virtual
assistants.

Q.2 What are the speech fundamentals?

1. Ans: Speech Recognition: This is where a computer listens to spoken
words and turns them into written text. It's like when you talk to your
phone, and it magically types out what you're saying.
2. Phonetics and Phonology: These are fancy words for the sounds of
speech and how they're produced. In NLP, understanding these helps
computers recognize different accents, dialects, and even speech
impediments.
3. Word Segmentation: Just like how we separate words when we speak,
computers need to know where one word ends and the next one begins.
This helps them understand the meaning of sentences better.
4. Language Modeling: This is about predicting what words or phrases are
likely to come next in a sentence. It's like when you start typing a
message on your phone, and it predicts the next word for you.
5. Syntax and Grammar: These are the rules that govern how words are
put together to form meaningful sentences. Computers use these rules to
understand the structure of sentences and make sense of them.
6. Semantic Analysis: This is where computers try to understand the
meaning of words and sentences. It's not just about knowing the words
themselves but also understanding their context and what they imply.
7. Pragmatics: This is about understanding the intentions behind speech,
like sarcasm, politeness, or humor. It's what makes communication more
than just exchanging words but also understanding the social and cultural
aspects of language.

Q.3 What is Articulatory phonetics?

Ans: Articulatory phonetics is like teaching computers about the physical
movements we make when we talk. It's about understanding how our lips,
tongue, vocal cords, and other parts of our mouth move to produce
different sounds.
when we say words, our mouth shapes and moves in specific ways to
create different sounds. For example, when we say "ba," our lips come
together, and when we say "th," our tongue touches our teeth.
Articulatory phonetics helps computers understand these movements so
they can recognize and interpret spoken words accurately.
Articulatory phonetics helps us understand how consonants and vowels
are formed by controlling the airflow and shape of our speech organs.
Articulatory phonetics also considers whether the vocal cords vibrate or
not when making a sound. For example, "s" is voiceless because the vocal
cords don't vibrate, while "z" is voiced because they do.
Articulatory phonetics helps us transcribe speech sounds into written
symbols, like the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), so we can study
and analyze them more easily.

Q.4 What are the classification of speech sounds?

Ans: Based on Voice:
Voiced and Voiceless sound:
Speech can be classified as voiced and voiceless sounds. Both produce
sounds, but the difference is in the vibration of the vocal cords. Voiced
sounds are produced when the vocal cords vibrate, while voiceless sounds
are produced when the vocal cords do not vibrate.
 Based on Phonetics:
Vowels: Vowels are produced with an open vocal tract and involve minimal obstruction.
They are classified based on tongue height (high, mid, low), tongue advancement (front,
central, back), and lip rounding (rounded, unrounded).
Consonants: Consonants involve more obstruction in the vocal tract. They are classified
based on various features such as place of articulation (e.g., bilabial, alveolar), manner of
articulation (e.g., stop, fricative), and voicing (e.g., voiced, voiceless).
Place of Articulation: Consonants are further classified based on where in the
mouth they are produced. For example, sounds like "p" and "b" are produced by
closing the lips (bilabial), while sounds like "t" and "d" are produced by touching
the tongue to the alveolar ridge just behind the upper front teeth (alveolar).

Sonority: This refers to the loudness or intensity of a sound relative to other

sounds in the same language. Vowels are generally more sonorous than
consonants, and within consonants, sounds like nasals and liquids tend to be
more sonorous than stops and fricatives.

Distinctive Features: Speech sounds can also be classified based on

distinctive features such as voicing, place, manner, and airstream mechanism.
These features help distinguish one sound from another in a particular language.

Distinctive Features: Speech sounds can also be classified based on

distinctive features such as voicing, place, manner, and airstream mechanism.
These features help distinguish one sound from another in a particular language.

Diphthongs and Glides: Apart from pure vowels, there are also diphthongs
(vowel sounds formed by the combination of two vowel sounds within the same
syllable, like "oi" in "coin") and glides (semi-vowel sounds that act as transitional
sounds between vowels, like "y" in "yes" and "w" in "we").

Q.5 What are acoustic of speech production?

Ans: The acoustics of speech production in NLP is about understanding
how sounds are made and transmitted as waves through the air when we
speak. Here's a simple breakdown:

1. Sound Waves: When we talk, our vocal cords vibrate, creating sound
waves. These waves travel through the air and reach our ears, allowing us
and others to hear the sounds.
2. Frequency and Amplitude: Speech sounds have different frequencies
(how often the waves repeat) and amplitudes (how loud the waves are).
For example, high-frequency waves create high-pitched sounds, while low-
frequency waves create low-pitched sounds.
3. Formants: In speech, certain frequencies are emphasized, creating
distinct sounds called formants. These formants help differentiate
between vowels and contribute to the unique characteristics of speech
sounds.
4. Spectrogram: A spectrogram is a visual representation of sound waves
over time. In NLP, spectrograms are used to analyze and visualize speech,
showing the intensity of different frequencies at different points in time.
5. Coarticulation: When we speak, the sounds we make can influence each
other. This phenomenon is called coarticulation. For example, the
pronunciation of a vowel may change slightly depending on the
surrounding consonants.
6. Speech Recognition: Understanding the acoustics of speech production
is essential for speech recognition systems to accurately interpret and
transcribe spoken words into text.
7. Speaker Variability: Everyone's voice is unique, and factors like accent,
pitch, and speed of speech contribute to speaker variability. Acoustic
analysis helps account for these differences in NLP systems.
8. Noise Reduction: Acoustic modeling techniques are used to reduce
background noise and improve the accuracy of speech processing
systems, such as speech recognition and synthesis.

Q.6 What are speech analysis and feature extraction?

Ans: Speech analysis and feature extraction in NLP involve breaking
down spoken language into smaller, meaningful parts and identifying
important characteristics or features. Here's an easy explanation of the
process:

1. Speech Input: The process begins with capturing spoken language,

either through a microphone or recorded audio.
2. Pre-processing: The captured speech undergoes pre-processing to clean
and enhance the audio quality. This may involve removing background
noise, normalizing the volume, and filtering out irrelevant sounds.
3. Segmentation: The speech is segmented into smaller units, such as
phonemes (individual speech sounds), syllables, or words. This step helps
in analyzing each part separately.
4. Feature Extraction: Features are distinctive attributes or characteristics
extracted from the segmented speech. These features could include
properties like pitch (how high or low the voice is), duration (length of
speech sounds), intensity (loudness), and spectral characteristics
(frequency content of the sound).
5. Acoustic Modeling: Statistical models are used to represent the
relationship between the extracted features and the corresponding
speech units (phonemes, words, etc.). This modeling helps in recognizing
and understanding speech patterns.
6. Language Modeling: In addition to acoustic features, language models
are used to capture the structure and patterns of spoken language. This
involves analyzing the sequence of words or phonemes and predicting the
most likely next word or phoneme based on context.
7. Classification and Recognition: Finally, the extracted features are used
in classification and recognition tasks, such as speech recognition
(converting speech to text), speaker identification, emotion recognition,
and language understanding.
8. Feedback Loop: The system continuously learns and improves by
comparing its predictions with the actual speech input and adjusting the
models accordingly. This feedback loop helps in refining the accuracy and
performance of the speech analysis system over time.

Q.7 what are pattern comparison

Techniques?

Pattern comparison techniques involve comparing patterns extracted from speech signals to
determine similarities, differences, or matches.
Here are some commonly used pattern comparison techniques in speech processing:

Dynamic Time Warping (DTW):

DTW is a technique used to compare two temporal sequences is used for recognizing similar
speech patterns. It allows for flexible matching of sequences with different lengths and
temporal variations.

Euclidean Distance:
Euclidean distance is a simple and widely used technique for measuring the similarity
between two feature vectors or patterns. The Euclidean distance calculates the geometric
distance between two feature vectors in the feature space.

Cosine Similarity:
Cosine similarity measures the angle between two vectors and is commonly used to
compare the similarity between feature vectors. In speech processing, cosine similarity is
often employed to compare speech vectors in tasks like speaker verification or speaker
recognition.

Hidden Markov Models (HMMs):

HMMs are not only used for classification but also for comparing patterns. By comparing the
likelihoods of observed speech features given different HMMs, one can determine which
HMM or phoneme model best matches the input speech. HMM-based pattern comparison
is extensively used in speech recognition systems.

Neural Networks:
Neural networks, such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) or Siamese networks, can
be trained to learn similarity metrics directly from speech data. These networks can map
 speech patterns into high-dimensional embeddings and measure similarity based on the
distances or similarities in the embedding space.

Phonetic-based approaches:
Phonetic-based approaches recognize speech based on their phonetic similarity. They are
used in machine learning techniques for speech recognition

Support Vector Machines (SVMs):

SVMs are machine learning algorithms used for pattern recognition and classification. They
can be trained to classify speech patterns based on features extracted from the speech
signal. SVMs are used in various speech-processing tasks, including speaker identification
and emotion recognition.

Q.6 what is speech distortion measures -mathematical and

perpectual in nlp?
Ans: Speech distortion measures in NLP are methods used to quantify
and evaluate the differences between the original speech signal and its
distorted version. Here's a simplified explanation:

1. Mathematical Measures: These measures involve using mathematical

formulas and algorithms to compare the original speech signal with the
distorted one. Common mathematical measures include Signal-to-Noise
Ratio (SNR), Mean Squared Error (MSE), and Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio
(PSNR). These measures provide numerical values indicating the extent of
distortion or degradation in the speech signal.
2. Perceptual Measures: Perceptual measures focus on how humans
perceive speech quality. Instead of relying solely on mathematical
calculations, these measures take into account human auditory
perception. For example, Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (PESQ)
and Mean Opinion Score (MOS) are commonly used perceptual measures.
They involve human listeners rating the quality of speech samples based
on factors like clarity, naturalness, and overall intelligibility.

Q.6 What is speech modelling techniques ?

Ans: Speech modeling techniques play a crucial role in various speech-processing tasks within
NLP, such as speech recognition, speech synthesis, and speech understanding. These techniques
involve creating statistical or neural models that capture the underlying structure and patterns in
speech signals. Here are some commonly used speech modeling techniques in speech processing:
Hidden Markov Models (HMMs):
HMMs are not only used for classification but also for comparing patterns. By comparing the
likelihoods of observed speech features given different HMMs, one can determine which HMM or
phoneme model best matches the input speech. HMM-based pattern comparison is extensively used
in speech recognition systems.

Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs):

GMMs are probabilistic models that represent the distribution of acoustic features in speech signals.
In speech processing, GMMs are used to model the acoustic properties of phonemes or sub-word
units. GMMs can be used in combination with HMMs to build more accurate speech recognition
systems.

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs):

DNNs can learn hierarchical representations from raw speech data and capture complex
relationships between acoustic features and phonetic units.

Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs):

RNNs are designed to capture temporal dependencies in sequential data, making them suitable for
speech modeling. In speech processing, recurrent neural networks, such as Long Short-Term
Memory (LSTM) or Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), are used to model the sequential nature of speech
signals and capture long-term dependencies.

Transformer Models:
Transformer models, originally introduced for natural language processing, have also been adapted
for speech processing. Transformer-based architectures, such as Conformer, allow for capturing
global dependencies in speech signals and have shown promising results in speech recognition and
speech synthesis tasks.

Probabilistic Models:
Various probabilistic models, such as Hidden Semi-Markov Models (HSMMs), Factorial Hidden
Markov Models (FHMMs), or Probabilistic Context-Free Grammars (PCFGs), are used in speech
processing. These models provide a probabilistic framework for capturing complex patterns in
speech data and have applications in speech recognition, parsing, and synthesis.

Waveform Models: Instead of working with acoustic features, waveform

models operate directly on the raw speech signal. Generative models like
WaveNet and WaveGlow generate speech waveforms sample by sample,
capturing fine-grained details and nuances in speech.

Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Networks: LSTMs are a type of RNN

designed to capture long-range dependencies in sequential data. They are
particularly effective for modeling speech sequences, where context and
temporal dependencies are crucial for understanding and generating coherent
speech.
Hidden Markonikov Model:- Wriiten in notes (imp)