Design and Implementation of a Phonological Analyzer for the Irula Language: A Computational Approach to Endangered Language Preservation

Vaishakh S. Kamath, Safa Salim, Jyothi Ratnam, Arun Kumar K. P, G. Veena

2025

Abstract

Irula is a South Dravidian language spoken by a small tribal community in India and is critically endangered due to a decreasing number of speakers and the assimilation of its speakers into dominant regional languages such as Tamil and Malayalam. This research focuses on creating a phonological analyzer that utilizes Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) for feature extraction, aiming to tackle the computational limitations faced by the Irula language. The study evaluates the performance of two machine learning models, Bi-LSTM and SVM, in classifying audio data from Irula, Tamil, and Malayalam. Additionally, it explores the phonological systems of these closely related languages, emphasizing articulatory features, variations in consonants, and retroflex articulations. The findings indicate that the SVM model surpasses the Bi-LSTM model, achieving a classification accuracy of 90%. This project contributes to the preservation of endangered languages and enhances the field of low-resource language processing by creating a computational framework for analyzing the phonological features of Irula. The results also open avenues for additional research in computational linguistics and phonetics, particularly for languages that are underrepresented.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

S. Kamath V., Salim S., Ratnam J., Kumar K. P A. and Veena G. (2025). Design and Implementation of a Phonological Analyzer for the Irula Language: A Computational Approach to Endangered Language Preservation. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Futuristic Technology - Volume 2: INCOFT; ISBN 978-989-758-763-4, SciTePress, pages 871-877. DOI: 10.5220/0013606300004664

in Bibtex Style

@conference{incoft25,
author={Vaishakh S. Kamath and Safa Salim and Jyothi Ratnam and Arun Kumar K. P and G. Veena},
title={Design and Implementation of a Phonological Analyzer for the Irula Language: A Computational Approach to Endangered Language Preservation},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Futuristic Technology - Volume 2: INCOFT},
year={2025},
pages={871-877},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013606300004664},
isbn={978-989-758-763-4},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Futuristic Technology - Volume 2: INCOFT
TI - Design and Implementation of a Phonological Analyzer for the Irula Language: A Computational Approach to Endangered Language Preservation
SN - 978-989-758-763-4
AU - S. Kamath V.
AU - Salim S.
AU - Ratnam J.
AU - Kumar K. P A.
AU - Veena G.
PY - 2025
SP - 871
EP - 877
DO - 10.5220/0013606300004664
PB - SciTePress