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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: Hearsay II question in AIList Digest   V2 #110
Message-ID: <1098@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 31-Aug-84 16:05:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: dciem.1098
Posted: Fri Aug 31 16:05:13 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Sep-84 01:15:38 EDT
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Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
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It turns out that even to separate the syllables in continuous speech
you need to have some understanding of what the speaker is talking
about! You can discover this for yourself by trying to hear the sounds
of the words when someone is speaking a foreign language. You can't
even repeat them correctly as nonsense syllables.
================
I used to believe this myth myself, but my various visits to Europe for
short (1-3 week periods, mostly) trips have convinced me otherwise. There
is no point trying to repeat syllables as nonsense, partly because the
sounds are not in your phonetic vocabulary.  More to the point, syllable
separation definitely preceded understanding.  I HAD to learn to separate
syllables of German long before I could understand anything (I still
understand only a tiny fraction, but now I can parse most sentences
into kernel and bound morphemes because I now know most of the common
bound ones).  My understanding of written German is a little better,
and when I do understand a German sentence, it is because I can transcribe
it into a visual representation with some blanks.

(Incidentally, I also do some research in speech recognition, so I am
well aware of the syllable segmentation problem.  There do exist
segmentation algorithms that correctly segment over 95% of the syllables
in connected speech without any attempt to identify phonemes, let
alone words or the "meaning" of speech.  Mermelstein, now in Montreal,
and Mangold in Ulm, Germany, are names that come to mind.)
-- 

Martin Taylor
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