1. CS626-449: Speech, NLP and the Web/Topics in AI
Pushpak Bhattacharyya
CSE Dept., IIT Bombay
Lecture-31: Phonology; ASR, Speech Synthesis
(courtesy: Ankit Agarwal for part of material on phonology)

2. What is Phonology
Phonetics: Study of sounds produced by the articulatory system (place and manner of articualtion)
Phonology: Study of sound units combine to form bigger units like syllables

3. Ancient 5 x 5 Indian Classification of Consonants
Group
क वर्ग क ख ग घ ङ
Velar
च वर्ग च छ ज झ ञ
Palatal
ट वर्ग ट ठ ड ढ ण
Alveolar
त वर्ग त थ द ध न
Dental
प वर्ग प फ ब भ म
Labial

4. Vowels (1/2)

5. Vowels (2/2)

6. Phonology: Syllables

7. The concept of schwa First alphabet of IAL – {a}
Unstressed and Toneless neutral vowel
Sanskrit is phonetically perfect – no neutral vowels
Hindi, Bengali etc. allow schwa to be neutral
Some schwas deleted and some are not
Schwa deletion – important issue for grapheme to phoneme conversion

8. Schwa deletion contexts
Saphalya and Amantrana (साफल्य, आमंत्रण)
Priya and Tritiya (प्रिय, तृतीय)
Kavya and Ashva (काव्य, अश्व)
Badhai (बधाई)
Deleted only at the end of आमंत्रण
Not Deleted for rest of the examples
A difficult problem in case of transliteration

9. English Phonology Phonology English Phonology
Study of the structure and systematic patterning of sounds in human language.
Refers to a description of the sounds of a particular language and the rules governing the distribution of these sounds.
English Phonology
No. of speech sounds in English varies from dialect to dialect.
Longman Dictionary: 24 consonant phonemes (c.p.), 23 vowel phonemes (v.p.), additionally 2 c.p. & 4 v.p. for foreign words.
American Heritage Dictionary: 25 c.p., 18 v.p., additionally 1 c.p. & 5 v.p. for foreign words.

10. Consonant Phonemes
25 consonant phonemes found in most dialects of English.
Categorized under six different categories (on the basis of their sonority level, stress, way of pronunciation etc.):
Nasal: Acoustically, nasal stops are sonorants, meaning they do not restrict the escape of air and cross-linguistically are nearly always voiced.
Plosive: Produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract (the cavity where sound is filtered).
Affricate: Affricate consonants begin as stops (such as /t/ or /d/) but release as a fricative (such as /s/ or /z/) rather than directly into the following vowel.

11. Consonant Phonemes
Fricative: Produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These are the lower lip against the upper teeth in the case of /f/.
Approximant: In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence. Examples: /l/, as in ‘lip’, and approximants like /j/ and /w/ in ‘yes’ and ‘well’ which correspond closely to vowels.
Lateral: Laterals are “L”-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue.

12. Consonant Phonemes

13. Vowel Phonemes 20 vowel phonemes found in most dialects of English.
Categorized under different categories (on the basis of their sonority level).

14. Vowel Phonemes
Monophthong: “monophthongos” ≡ single note. “pure” vowel sound.
Articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed.
Does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation.
Categorized in Short and Long vowels.
Short: Perceived for a shorter duration. For e.g., /ə/, /e/ etc.
Long: Comparatively longer duration. For e.g., /i:/, /u:/ etc.
Diphthong: “two tones”. Vowel combination involving quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another.
Often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound.
Two target tongue positions.
Represented by two symbols. For e.g., /eə/

15. Syllable Structure S ≡ Syllable, O ≡ Onset R ≡ Rhyme, N ≡ Nucleus
Count of no. of syllables in a word is roughly/intuitively the no. of vocalic segments in a word.
Thus, presence of a vowel is an obligatory element in the structure of a syllable. This vowel is called “nucleus”.
Basic Configuration: (C)V(C).
Part of syllable preceding the nucleus is called the onset.
Elements coming after the nucleus are called the coda.
Nucleus and coda together are referred to as the rhyme.
S ≡ Syllable, O ≡ Onset
R ≡ Rhyme, N ≡ Nucleus
Co ≡ Coda

16. Syllable Structure: Examples
‘word’
‘sprint’

17. Syllable Structure: Examples
‘may’
‘opt’
‘air’
 No Coda.
 No Onset.
 No Coda, No Onset.

18. Syllable Structure Open Syllable: ends in vowel
Closed syllable: ends in consonant or consonant cluster
Light Syllable: A syllable which is open and ends in a short vowel
General Description – CV.
Example, ‘air’.
Heavy Syllable: Closed syllables or syllables ending in diphthong
Example: ‘opt’
Example, ‘may’

19. Syllabification: Determining Syllable Boundaries
Given a string of syllables (word), what is the coda of one and the onset of another?
In a sequence such as VCV, where V is any vowel and C is any consonant, is the medial C the coda of the first syllable (VC.V) or the onset of the second syllable (V.CV)?
E.g., ari (अरि; “enemy”)
To determine the correct groupings, there are some rules, two of them being the most important and significant:
Maximal Onset Principle,
Sonority Hierarchy

20. Maximal Onset Principle
The consonants that form a word-internal onset are the maximal sequence that can be found at the beginning of words.
English permits only 3 consonants to form an onset.
Once 2nd and 3rd consonants are determined, only 1 consonant can appear in the 1st position.
Second = /p/, Third = /r/. Then First can only be /s/. E.g., ‘spring’.
More illustrative example: ‘constructs’
Consonant sequence: n-s-t-r
Either ‘con structs’ OR ‘cons tructs’ OR ‘const ructs’ OR ‘constr ucts’.
As, ‘str’ can serve as the onset of a syllable, that’s why the correct syllabification will be ‘con structs’.

21. Sonority Hierarchy
Sonority: A perceptual property referring to the loudness of a sound relative to that of other sounds with the same length.
Sonority Hierarchy: Ranking of speech sounds (or phonemes) by amplitude.
For e.g., if you say the vowel /e/, you will produce louder sound than if you say the plosive /t/.
It suggests that nuclei are the peaks of sonority and segments on either side of the peak show a decrease in sonority w.r.t. peak.
Plosives  Affricates  Fricatives  Nasals  Laterals  Approximants  Vowels (Increasing order of sonority).

22. Constraints: Phonotactics
Determines possible comb. of onsets and codas which can occur.
Deals with restriction on the permissible combination of phonemes.
Defines permissible syllable structure, consonant clusters and vowel sequence by means of phonotactical constraints.
In general, rules operate around the sonority hierarchy.
Fricative /s/ is lower on the sonority hierarchy than the lateral /l/, so the combination /sl/ is permitted in onsets and /ls/ is permitted in codas. Opposite is not allowed.
Thus, ‘slips’ and ‘pulse’ are possible English words.
‘lsips’ and ‘pusl’ are not possible.

23. Constraints on Onsets
One-consonant: Only /ŋ/ can’t be distributed in syllable-initial position.
Two-consonant: We refer to the scale of sonority.
Sequence ‘rn’ is ruled out since there is a decrease of sonority.
Minimal Sonority Distance: Distance in sonority between the first and the second element in the onset must be of at least 2 degrees.
Thus, on the basis of Sonority Hierarchy and Minimal Sonority Distance, only a limited no. of possible two-consonant clusters.
Three-consonant:
Restricted to licensed two-consonant onsets preceded by /s/.
Also, /s/ can only be followed by a voiceless sound.
Therefore, only /spl/, /spr/, /str/, /skr/, /spj/, /stj/, /skj/, /skw/, /skl/, /smj/ will be allowed. (splinter, spray, strong etc.)
While /sbl/, /sbr/, /sdr/, /sgr/, /sθr/ will be ruled out.

24. Constraints on Onsets
Possible 2-consonat clusters in an Onset

25. Constraints on Coda

26. Constraints on Coda

27. Other Constraints Nucleus: The following can occur as nucleus:
All vowel sounds (monophthongs as well as diphthongs).
Syllabic:
Both the onset and the coda are optional (as seen previously).
/j/ at the end of an onset (/pj/, /bj/, /tj/, /dj/, /kj/, /fj/, /vj/, /θj/, /sj/, /zj/, /hj/, /mj/, /nj/, /lj/, /spj/, /stj/, /skj/) must be followed by /uɪ/ or /ʊə/.
Long vowels and diphthongs are not followed by /ŋ/.
/ʊ/ is rare in syllable-initial position.
Stop + /w/ before /uɪ, ʊ, ʌ, aʊ/ are excluded.

28. Phonteic Symbols and IPA notation

29. IPA: vowels

30. “Parallel” Corpus
Phoneme Example Translation AA odd AA D AE at AE T AH hut HH AH T AO ought AO T AW cow K AW AY hide HH AY D B be B IY
LeftRight: Speech Synthesis
(Grapheme to Phoneme)
RightLeft: Speech Recognition
(Phoneme to Grapheme)

31. “Parallel” Corpus cntd
Phoneme Example Translation
CH cheese CH IY Z
D dee D IY
DH thee DH IY EH Ed EH D
ER hurt HH ER T
EY ate EY T
F fee F IY
G green G R IY N
HH he HH IY
IH it IH T
IY eat IY T
JH gee JH IY
LeftRight: Speech Synthesis
(Grapheme to Phoneme)
RightLeft: Speech Recognition
(Phoneme to Grapheme)