Automatic Detection of Palatalized Consonants in Kashmiri

In this study, the acoustic-phonetic attributes of palatalization in the Kashmiri speech is investigated. It is a unique phonetic feature of Kashmiri in the Indian context. An automated approach is proposed to detect this unique phonetic feature from the continuous Kashmiri speech. The i-matra vowel has the impact of palatalizing the consonant connected to it. Therefore, these consonants investigated in synchronous with vowel regions, which are spotted using the instantaneous energy computed from the envelope-derivative of the speech signal. The resonating characteristics of the vocal-tract system framework that reflect the formant dynamics are used to differentiate palatalized consonants from the other consonants. In this regard, the Hilbert envelope of the numerator of the group-delay function that provides good time-frequency resolution used to extract formants. The palatalization detection experimentation carried out in various vowel contexts using the acoustic cues, and it produced a promising result with a detection accuracy of 92.46 %.