Chinese prosodic words forming method and apparatus

• US 20080147405A1
• Filed: 12/10/2007
• Published: 06/19/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 12/13/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Fujitsu Limited
• Original Assignee: Fujitsu Limited
• Inventors: Qing, Guo, Katae, Nobuyuki
• Granted Patent: US 8,392,191 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/258
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/10 Prosody rules derived from text; Stress or intonation

Abstract

The present invention provides a method and apparatus of forming Chinese prosodic words, which method comprises the steps of inputting Chinese text; performing process of word segmentation and part of speech annotation for the input Chinese text to generate an initial prosodic word sequence; inserting grids representing prosodic word boundaries for all the words in the initial prosodic word sequence to generate a grid prosodic word sequence; annotating the grids ready to be deleted in the grid prosodic word sequence based on the prosodic word forming means; judging the grids which actually need to be deleted in the grids ready to be deleted based on the prosodic word forming means; deleting the grids which actually need to be deleted in the grid prosodic word sequence, and word forming the words between every two grids in the remaining grids to generate prosodic words. The present invention avoids the defect whereby the type of insertion error of the prosodic word would render the pronunciation hard to understand or unnatural as far as possible, and reduces the number of the type of insertion error of prosodic word boundaries.

Claims

1. A method of forming Chinese prosodic words, characterized in that said method comprises steps of:

inputting Chinese text;

performing process of word segmentation and part of speech annotation for the input Chinese text to generate an initial prosodic word sequence;

inserting grids representing prosodic word boundaries for all the words in the initial prosodic word sequence to generate a grid prosodic word sequence;

annotating the grids ready to be deleted in the grid prosodic word sequence based on the prosodic word forming means;

judging the grids which actually need to be deleted in the grids ready to be deleted based on the prosodic word forming means;

deleting the grids which actually need to be deleted in the grid prosodic word sequence, and word forming the words between every two grids in the remaining grids to generate prosodic words.

2. The method according to claim 1, characterized in word dividing and part of speech annotating the input Chinese text to generate word segmentation result, and generating an initial prosodic word sequence based on said word segmentation result.

3. The method according to claim 1, characterized in that said grids ready to be deleted in annotating said grid prosodic word sequence based on the prosodic word forming means define annotating the grids to be deleted in the same grid prosodic word sequence based a plurality of prosodic word forming means.

4. The method according to claim 1 or 3, characterized in that said grids which actually need to be deleted in judging the grids ready to be deleted based on the prosodic word forming means define comprehensively judging the grids which actually need to be deleted in the grids to be deleted based on a plurality of prosodic word forming means.

5. The method according to claim 4, characterized in that said grids which actually need to be deleted in deleting said grid prosodic word sequence include:

comprehensively judging the grids ready to be deleted at present based on the plurality of prosodic word forming means, providing trust degree of the grids which need to be deleted for the grids to be deleted at present;

judging whether the grids ready to be deleted need to be deleted based on said trust degree, if yes, deleting the grids to be deleted at present.

6. An apparatus of forming Chinese prosodic words, characterized in that said apparatus comprises:

an input part for inputting Chinese text;

a word segmentation and part of speech annotating part for performing process of word segmentation and part of speech annotation for the input Chinese text to generate an initial prosodic word sequence;

a prosodic word grid insert part for inserting grids representing prosodic word boundaries for all the words in the initial prosodic word sequence to generate a grid prosodic word sequence;

a prosodic word grid delete part for annotating the grids ready to be deleted in the grid prosodic word sequence based on the prosodic word forming means;

judging the grids which actually need to be deleted in the grids ready to be deleted based on the prosodic word forming means;

deleting the grids which actually need to be deleted in the grid prosodic word sequence;

and a prosodic word generating part for forming the words between every two grids in the remaining grids to generate prosodic words.

7. The apparatus according to claim 6, characterized in that said apparatus comprises:

a word dividing result storage part for storing the word dividing result after the process of word dividing and part of speech annotating the input Chinese text to generate an initial prosodic word sequence based on said word segmentation result.

8. The apparatus according to claim 6, characterized in that said prosodic grid deletion part comprises a plurality of prosodic word forming means for annotating said grid prosodic word sequence based on the prosodic word forming means define annotating the grids ready to be deleted in the same grid prosodic word sequence based on the plurality of prosodic word forming means.

9. The apparatus according to claim 6 or 8, characterized in that said grids which actually need to be deleted in judging the grids to be deleted based on the prosodic word forming means define comprehensively judging the grids which actually need to be deleted in the grids to be deleted based on the plurality of prosodic word forming means.

10. The apparatus according to claim 9, characterized in that said prosodic word grid deletion part further comprises:

a grid deletion trust degree evaluation means for comprehensively judging the grids ready to be deleted at present based on the plurality of prosodic word forming means, providing trust degree of the grids which need to be deleted for the grids ready to be deleted at present;

a grid deletion means for judging whether the grids ready to be deleted at present need to be deleted based on said trust degree, if yes, deleting the grids ready to be deleted at present.

11. The apparatus according to claim 6, characterized in that said apparatus further comprises:

a prosodic word forming result analysis part for analyzing and processing the prosodic words generated by the prosodic word generating part to generate prosodic word forming analysis result.

12. A program of forming Chinese prosodic words, characterized in that said program comprises:

inputting Chinese text;

performing process of word segmentation and part of speech annotation for the input Chinese text to generate an initial prosodic word sequence;

inserting grids representing prosodic word boundaries for all the words in the initial prosodic word sequence to generate a grid prosodic word sequence;

annotating the grids ready to be deleted in the grid prosodic word sequence based on the prosodic word forming means;

judging the grids which actually need to be deleted in the grids ready to be deleted based on the prosodic word forming means;

deleting the grids which actually need to be deleted in the grid prosodic word sequence, and word forming the words between every two grids in the remaining grids to generate prosodic words.

13. A readable storage medium of storing Chinese prosodic words forming program, characterized in that said readable storage medium stores the following programs:

inputting Chinese text;

performing process of word segmentation and part of speech annotation for the input Chinese text to generate an initial prosodic word sequence;

inserting grids representing prosodic word boundaries for all the words in the initial prosodic word sequence to generate a grid prosodic word sequence;

annotating the grids ready to be deleted in the grid prosodic word sequence based on the prosodic word forming means;

judging the grids which actually need to be deleted in the grids ready to be deleted based on the prosodic word forming means;

deleting the grids which actually need to be deleted in the grid prosodic word sequence, and word forming the words between every two grids in the remaining grids to generate prosodic words.