Investigating the use of Phonemes as Readability Signals

An empirical exploration

Bachelor thesis (2023)

Authors

M.M. Mitrani Sabah Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Contributors

Maria Soledad Pera Boise State University (mentor)
Faculty
Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
Copyright: © 2023 Mark Mitrani Sabah
More Info
expand_more

Published Date

03-07-2023

Language

English

Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Abstract

In this paper, we aim to uncover previously unknown relationships between readability and phoneme-related features of text. Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another. Phonemes encode pronunciation, therefore they encode phonetic/auditory details about words that letters do not capture. However, the use of phonemes to aid readability estimation has thus far been limited in literature. This paper aims to bridge this knowledge gap by investigating the relationship between readability and individual phonemes, groupings of phonemes, and phoneme-derived features. The experiments are carried out on the WeeBit corpus. Our findings indicate that phoneme-related properties on their own do not serve as accurate indicators of text complexity.

Files

CSE3000_Final_Paper_Template_1... (pdf)
(pdf | 1.24 Mb)
Unknown license