A human benchmark for language recognition

Contains fulltext : 91348.pdf (author's version ) (Open Access)In this study, we explore a human benchmark in language recognition, for the purpose of comparing human performance to machine performance in the context of the NIST LRE 2007. Humans are categorised in terms of language proficiency, and performance is presented per proficiency. The main challenge in this work is the design of a test and application of a performance metric which allows a meaningful comparison of humans and machines. The main result of this work is that where subjects have lexical knowledge of a language, even at a low level, they perform as well as the state of the art in language recognition systems in 2007