Support vector machines approaches and its application to speaker identification

Author(s):  
S.Z. Boujelbene ◽  
D. Ben Ayed Mezghani ◽  
N. Ellouze
2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 689-714
Author(s):  
Suzanne Franks ◽  
Rommel Barbosa

This article studies the acoustic characteristics of some oral vowels in tonic syllables of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and which acoustic features are important for classifying native versus non-native speakers of BP. We recorded native and non-native speakers of BP for the purpose of the acoustic analysis of the vowels [a], [i], and [u] in tonic syllables. We analyzed the acoustic parameters of each segment using the Support Vector Machines algorithm to identify to which group, native or non-native, a new speaker belongs. When all of the variables were considered, a precision of 91% was obtained. The two most important acoustic cues to determine if a speaker is native or non-native were the durations of [i] and [u] in a word-final position. These findings can contribute to BP speaker identification as well as to the teaching of the pronunciation of Portuguese as a foreign language.


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