Distribution of acoustical components in Spanish syllables.

Abstract

The main goal of this work is to provide statistical data related to the acoustical syllabic organization of Spanish speech sounds. Results can be applied to speech recognition and other systems based on probabilistic information. The syllabic spectral patterns of a sample of 68, 141 units are inventoried. Based on their gross spectral shapes, acous ticsyllabic components were grouped into four sets: vowels, non-vocalic periodic sounds, bursts and noise bands. For syllabic type consonant-vowel (55.8%) the preferred combinations were burst-vowel (26.8%) and periodic sound-vowel (18.6%). For the consonant-vowel-consonant type the combination of burst-vowel-periodic sound ranked first (5.5%). The occurrence of acoustic syllabic components at word-initial and word finalpositions of frequently used words was also counted. Vowels either alone or in vowel-consonant pairs predominate at the onset of words. The opposite is true for the combination of a non-vocalic periodic sound with a vowel. Noise bands in con sonant-vowelsyllabic type show a tendency to occur at the offset of words. Burst vowel, which is the more frequently repeated combination, is evenly distributed at word margins. This type of spectral pattern has a high functional load in the acoustical structure of Spanish speech.