On the information rate of speech communication

Abstract

The key to the success of speech-based technology is an understanding of human speech communication. While significant advances have been made, a unified theory of speech communication that is both comprehensive and quantitative is yet to emerge. In this paper we approach speech communication from an information theoretical perspective. Without relying on prior knowledge of speech production, language, or auditory processing, we develop a new methodology for measuring the information rate of speech. Instead we rely on having recordings of multiple talkers saying the same utterance. In general, our results are consistent with a linguistic understanding of speech communication.