Post Lecture Speech notes

Basic Idea

• Speech is an acoustic signal, which we approximate as an analog signal. It is our goal to change this analog signal into a digital so that we can perform various forms of processing on it.

Parts of Speech

• Before we jump into the mathematical "deep end" we first need to know the basic building blocks of speech

• • A sentence that we hear is made up of syllables (sound) and separations (no sound). Simply put, a syllable is a single, uninterrupted sound that forms the rhythmical foundation of a language. For example, the word 'water' has two syllables, 'wa' and 'ter' separated by a tiny break in speech.

• • If we go down further, each syllable is formed of phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest, segmental unit of sound. It is what forms the difference between utterances. Even though two different groups use the same language and have different accents and because the phonemes have the same function.

Since phonemes are the smallest block of a speech signal, it is no surprise that form the basis for speech analysis.

prelecture notes here SupplementarySpeech_prelecture