Automatic Speech Recognition of Arabic Phonemes with Neural Networks: A Contrastive Study of Arabic and English

153 Pages·2019·7.85 MB·English

by  Mohammed Dib

SPRINGER BRIEFS IN
APPLIED SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGY
Mohammed Dib
Automatic Speech
Recognition of
Arabic Phonemes
with Neural
Networks
A Contrastive Study of
Arabic and English
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Mohammed Dib
Automatic Speech
Recognition of Arabic
Phonemes with Neural
Networks
A Contrastive Study of Arabic and English
Mohammed Dib
University of Tlemcen
Laboratory of Automatic Treatment of the Arabic Language
Tlemcen, Algeria
ISSN 2191-530X ISSN 2191-5318 (electronic)
SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology
ISBN 978-3-319-97709-6 ISBN 978-3-319-97710-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97710-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018952916
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To my parents, my wife and my three
children: Kheireddine, Rayane and
Anness. To my brothers, Abdassalam
and AbdelAziz, and to my sisters, Fatima,
Aouicha and Zina.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Professor Sidi Mohamed Riteri, the Director of the Laboratory
of Automatic Treatment of the Arabic Language, for expanding my understanding
of applied linguistics, inspiring me to write this book and supplying me with all the
necessary tools in his laboratory.
Many thanks go to Pr. Andrew Charles Breeze from the University of Navara and
Pr. Dendane Zoubir from the University of Abou Bakr Belaid Tlemcen who have
corrected the manuscript with the eyes of an eagle. I thank also Dr. Debbat Fatima
of the Department of Electronics at the University of Mascara for providing me with
techniques of signal processing and Chatti Boubeker for his help.
I would like to express my deep gratitude to several colleagues—Addou sid
Ahmed, teacher of English at the University of Tlemcen; Benammeur Said, teacher
in the translation department of the University of Tlemcen; Bensalah Mohamed,
teacher of physics; and Abderrahim Amine, Doctor in informatics—for their invalu-
able assistance.
vii
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Contrastive Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Computing Contrast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 General Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Arabic Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2 The Arabic Phonological System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2 Impact of Environment on Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.3 Alfasaha (Fluency or Eloquency) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.3.1 A rabic Sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.3.2 Sounds Used by Arabs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.3.3 The Syllable in Arabic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.3.4 Structure of the Arabic Syllable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.3.5 Types of Syllables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.4 Stress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.5 Compound Vowel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.5.1 D efinition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.5.2 D ifference Between Diphthong and Vowel . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.6 Intonation in Arabic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.6.1 F unctions of Intonation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.7 Infrequent Use of Dammah and Kasrah by Arabs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.8 Pause in Arabic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.9 Patterns of Nouns in Arabic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.10 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Arabic References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
ix
x Contents
3 T he English Phonological System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.2 Aim of Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.2.1 Language as a Symbol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.2.2 Language as Interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.3 English Sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.3.1 Vowels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.3.2 C onsonants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.3.3 S yllable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.3.4 S tress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.3.5 Intonation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4 A Contrastive Phonological Study of English and Arabic . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.2 Phonemic Analysis (Taxonomic Phonology) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.2.1 D efinition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.2.2 T axonomic Phonemics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.3 Sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4.4 English Corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
4.4.1 B ionic Eye . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
4.4.2 T otal Darkness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
4.4.3 L ighting Up Ron’s World of Darkness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
4.5 Arabic Corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.6 Inventory of Words Containing Schwa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4.7 Inventory of Words Containing h̝ Sound in Final Position . . . . . . . . . . 40
4.8 Inventory of Schwa and h Sound in Final Position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4.9 Words in Contrast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4.9.1 S egmentation to Show Contrast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
4.9.2 S pectrum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
4.10 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
5 Arabic Automatic Speech Recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
5.2 Speech Chain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
5.2.1 S peech Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
5.2.2 D iscrimination Between Speech Sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
5.3 Speech Recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5.3.1 F undamentals of Speech Recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
5.4 Intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
5.4.1 A rtificial Intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
5.4.2 N eural Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
5.4.3 F undamental of Neural Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
5.4.4 N eural Networks as a Set of Processing Units . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Contents xi
5.4.5 N eural Networks as a Set of Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.4.6 P rogramming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.5 Acoustic Phonetics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.5.1 W ave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.5.2 W ave Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.5.3 Fundamentals and Harmonics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
5.5.4 Frequency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
5.5.5 Amplitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
5.5.6 S pectrum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.5.7 P itch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.5.8 S ound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.6 Signal Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.6.1 D efinition of Signal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.6.2 S ound Signal Variance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.6.3 S ignal Processing Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.6.4 F ormants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5.7 Data Base . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5.7.1 Knowledge Base . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
5.7.2 D eletion by Opposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
5.7.3 S tages of Combination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
5.8 Syllables Recognition Using Neural Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
5.8.1 Results and Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5.9 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Arabic References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
General Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141