Analysis and synthesis of Maltese speech

Abstract

Recent developments in communications like speech band width compression systems automatic speech recognition, phonetic typewriters and speech coding methods as sensory aids to the handicapped, require the engineer to have a sound knowledge of the phonetics of speech. In particular telecommunications engineers who deal directly with physical waveforms of signals, are primarily interested in the phonetic description of the signals a system must handle, in statistical terms. This information is needed so that problems such as those of amplifier loading, quantisation and echo suppression can be properly analysed the complete system imposes as little impairment as possible to conversation as is economically feasible. Statistical data exists for some of the relevant properties of English. European and the languages of other countries. However, these comprise only a few of the hundreds of different used on communication links. As far as is known, the Maltese has never been the subject of scientific research for this purpose. As distinct from phonetic analysis, which is concerned with descriptions of sounds themselves, phonemic analysis which is concerned definitions of the distinctive elements of a particular system, is also of interest to the engineer. Pronemic descriptions are useful in the study of redundancy of, interpretation of the results of tests in understanding linguistic factors in the probabilities of certain confusions.