Use of statistical techniques to analyse significant speech features of the Maltese language

Abstract

Mathematical analysis of the Maltese Language has always been limited when compared to other languages. Since the number of regular Maltese speakers world wide probably barely reaches 5OOk, the effort implied in studying Maltese speech was restricted by these numbers. This FYP presents a preliminary attempt to model a section of Maltese speech, namely, segmental (phoneme) duration using a data-driven approach. Duration is possibly the most important prosodic feature that contributes to a clear and natural synthesised speech. This initial duration model is designed to be later on implemented as part of a Maltese Text-to-Speech Synthesis System.