The Analysis and Representation of Speech

The goal of this chapter is to introduce the reader to the acoustic and articulatory properties of the speech signal, as well as some of the methods used for its analysis. Presented, in some detail, are the mechanisms of speech production, aiming to provide the reader with the background necessary to understand the different components of the speech signal. We then briefly discuss the history of the development of some of the early speech analysis techniques in different engineering applications. Finally, we describe some of the most commonly used speech analysis techniques.