LAUSR

Abstract This paper discusses the use of hybrid features and artificial neural network (ANN) for spoken language identification (LID). At the feature extraction stage, we have used RASTA-PLP features and later hybrid features by combining the state-of-the-art MFCC features with RASTA-PLP features. The classifier used at the back-end of the LID system is Feed-forward Back Propagation Neural Network (FFBPNN). Performance comparison is done for all the thirteen learning algorithms available in FFBPNN. Results indicate better performance with MFCC + RASTA-PLP features as compared to RASTA-PLP features when used individually. The classification accuracy of 94.6 percent is obtained with ‘trainlm’ network training function and a test error rate of 0.10 with MFCC + RASTA-PLP hybrid features. On the other hand, RASTA-PLP features provide the best classification accuracy of 89.6%. Also, in this paper two new training functions are proposed. Experimental results show that for the MFCC + RASTA-PLP features, the proposed training function 1 offers 95.1 percent accuracy and 0.0993 mean square error. Similarly, the proposed training function 2 offers 95.3 per cent classification accuracy and 0.093 minimum mean square error for MFCC + RASTA-PLP features. The feasibility of the proposed solution is estimated by simulating multiple experiments on a language database of four languages i.e. Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and English in the working Platform of MATLAB.