Exploring rhythm formant analysis for Indic language classification

This paper reports a preliminary study on quantitative frequency domain rhythm cues for classifying five Indian languages: Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, and Tamil. We employ rhythm formant (R-formants) analysis, a technique introduced by Gibbon that utilizes low-frequency spectral analysis of amplitude modulation and frequency modulation envelopes to characterize speech rhythm. Various measures are computed from the LF spectrum, including R-formants, discrete cosine transform-based measures, and spectral measures. Results show that threshold-based and spectral features outperform directly computed R-formants. Temporal pattern of rhythm derived from LF spectrograms provides better language-discriminating cues. Combining all derived features we achieve an accuracy of 69.21% and a weighted F1 score of 69.18% in classifying the five languages. This study demonstrates the potential of RFA in characterizing speech rhythm for Indian language classification.