Different aspects of expert pronunciation quality ratings and their relation to scores produced by speech recognition algorithms

摘要

The ultimate aim of the research reported on here is to develop an automatic testing system for Dutch pronunciation. In the experiment described in this paper automatic scores of telephone speech produced by native and non-native Speakers of Dutch are compared with specific, i. e., temporal and segmental, and global pronunciation ratings assigned By three groups of experts: three phoneticians and two groups of three speech therapists. The goals of this experiment Are to determinutee (1) whether specific expert ratings of pronunciation quality contribute to our understanding of the Relation between human pronunciation scores and machine scores of speech quality, (2) whether different expert groups Assign essentially different ratings, and (3) to what extent rater pronunciation scores can be predicted n the basis of Automatic scores.