Probabilistic-trajectory segmental HMMs

“Segmental hidden Markov models” (SHMMs) are intended to overcome important speech-modelling limitations of the conventional-HMM approach by representing sequences (or segments) of features and incorporating the concept of trajectories to describe how features change over time. A novel feature of the approach presented in this paper is that extra-segmental variability between different examples of a sub-phonemic speech segment is modelled separately from intra-segmental variability within any one example. The extra-segmental component of the model is represented in terms of variability in the trajectory parameters, and these models are therefore referred to as “probabilistic-trajectory segmental HMMs” (PTSHMMs). This paper presents the theory of PTSHMMs using a linear trajectory description characterized by slope and mid-point parameters, and presents theoretical and experimental comparisons between different types of PTSHMMs, simpler SHMMs and conventional HMMs. Experiments have demonstrated that, for any given feature set, a linear PTSHMM can substantially reduce the error rate in comparison with a conventional HMM, both for a connected-digit recognition task and for a phonetic classification task. Performance benefits have been demonstrated from incorporating a linear trajectory description and additionally from modelling variability in the mid-point parameter. c © 1999 British Crown Copyright/DERA