A Proposal for the Acoustic Modelling for Word Stress

Abstract

The present study proposes a method for acoustic correlates of stress at word level or words in sentence level, to explain the pattern of distribution of each acoustic correlate, from the observation that it is possible to generate a common pattern of distribution of correlates at least within a group of words belong to same structure within a language. The most reliable or robust acoustic cue to primary stress which is always linked with primary stress. The study has named it as Maximal Acoustic Correlate for Primary stress (MaxACPS). The most reliable or robust acoustic cue to stressed or prominent Syllables (Primary, secondary and tertiary etc): named as, Maximal Acoustic correlate of stressed syllables ( (MaxACS). More Potential Acoustic correlates which play lesser role than other correlates named Medium Acoustic correlate of stressed syllable (MidACS). Means in a language some acoustic correlate will occur prominently in stressed syllable in one case and at the same time in another case it occurs less prominently in stressed syllables. Minimal Potential Acoustic correlate (MinACS), plays lesser role than other correlates for stressed syllable. It has used high quality speech corpus in Malayalam for the analysis and conclusion.