Spoken Language Characterization

Abstract

This chapter describes the types of information that can be used spoken-languagecharacterization to characterize spoken languages. Automatic spoken language identification languageidentification (LID) (LID) systems, which are tasked with determining the identity of the language of speech samples, can utilize a variety of information sources in order to distinguish among languages. In this chapter, we first define what we mean by a language (as opposed to a dialect). We then describe some of the language collections that have been used to investigate spoken language identification, followed by discussion of the types of features that have been or could be utilized by automatic systems and people. In general, approaches used by people and machines differ, perhaps sufficiently to suggest building a partnership between human and machine. We finish with a discussion of the conditions under which textual materials could be used to augment our ability to characterize a spoken language.