Speech 101'-What Eveyone Working on Spoken Language Processing Needs to Know about Spoken Language

Abstract: In recent years, the field of spoken language processing has been moving at a very fast pace. The impact of deep learning coupled with access to vast data resources has given rise to unprecedented improvements in the performance of speech processing algorithms and systems. However, the availability of such pre-recorded datasets and open-source machine-learning toolkits means that practitioners – especially students – are in real danger of becoming detached from the nature and behaviour of actual speech signals. This tutorial is aimed at providing an appreciation of the fundamental properties of spoken language, from low-level phonetic detail to high-level communicative behaviour, with a special emphasis on aspects that may have significance for current and future research.