Classification of South African languages using text and acoustic based methods: A case of six selected languages Peleira Nicholas Zulu University of KwaZulu-Natal Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering Durban, 4041, South Africa
[email protected] Heeringa, 2004; Van-Bezooijen & Heeringa, 2006; Abstract Van-Hout & Münstermann, 1981), and those sub- jective decisions are, for example, the basis for Language variations are generally known to classifying separate languages, and certain groups have a severe impact on the performance of of language variants as dialects of one another. It is Human Language Technology Systems. In or- well known that languages are complex; they differ der to predict or improve system performance, in vocabulary, grammar, writing format, syntax a thorough investigation into these variations, and many other characteristics. This presents levels similarities and dissimilarities, is required. Distance measures have been used in several of difficulty in the construction of objective com- applications of speech processing to analyze parative measures between languages. Even if one different varying speech attributes. However, intuitively knows, for example, that English is not much work has been done on language dis- closer to French than it is to Chinese, what are the tance measures, and even less work has been objective factors that allow one to assess the levels done involving South African languages. This of distance? study explores two methods for measuring the This bears substantial similarities to the analo- linguistic distance of six South African lan- gous questions that have been asked about the rela- guages. It concerns a text based method, (the tionships between different species in the science Levenshtein Distance), and an acoustic ap- of cladistics.