Role of neural network models for developing speech systems

This paper discusses the application of neural networks for developing different speech systems. Prosodic parameters of speech at syllable level depend on positional, contextual and phonological features of the syllables. In this paper, neural networks are explored to model the prosodic parameters of the syllables from their positional, contextual and phonological features. The prosodic parameters considered in this work are duration and sequence of pitch (F ₀) values of the syllables. These prosody models are further examined for applications such as text to speech synthesis, speech recognition, speaker recognition and language identification. Neural network models in voice conversion system are explored for capturing the mapping functions between source and target speakers at source, system and prosodic levels. We have also used neural network models for characterizing the emotions present in speech. For identification of dialects in Hindi, neural network models are used to capture the dialect specific information from spectral and prosodic features of speech.