On the Relation between Maximum Spectra Boundaries

Earlier research has shown that the maximum spectral transition positions are related with the perceptual critical points that contain the most important information for consonant and syllable perception. This paper presents a quantitative analysis of the relation, in time, between the maximum spectral transition positions and the phone boundaries in fluent read speech. This analysis is based on the training part of the TIMIT American English database which contains both phone boundaries and labels manually-determined by a group of experts. The results of this analysis show that there is a significant correlation between the maximum spectral transition positions and the manually selected phone boundaries. This, in turn, suggests that there is an important relation between the commonly accepted phone boundaries and the perceptual critical points. Index Terms: phone boundaries, spectral transition, phonemes