PUNJARP ABET: A NEW PHONETIC ALPHABET FOR SPEECH PROCESSING IN THE PUNJABI LANGUAGE

摘要

In this paper, a new phonetic alphabet called PUNJARPAbet for speech processing in the Punjabi language has been designed. The new phonetic coding scheme PUNJARPAbet developed in this paper has been primarily designed to encode the text and speech corpora recently developed by the authors in the Punjabi language. This recently developed corpus has at least 20 special features. PUNJARPAbet is capable of coding examples related to all special features of the new corpus. PUNJARPAbet is an all upper-case coding scheme and is consistent with the all upper-case version of the famous coding scheme ARPAbet developed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). The new scheme is very easy to follow, and is the most suitable scheme for typing on an ordinary computer keyboard as well as an ordinary typewriter. Unlike many other schemes such as the famous International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the PUNJARAbet is free from the laborious, irritating, and time-consuming necessities for dealing with the special symbols. It has been clearly demonstrated in this paper that PUNJARPAbet is a versatile, efficient and convenient coding scheme for not only the Punjabi language, but also any language which has sounds similar to the ones found in the Punjabi speech.