GLOBAL BOUNDARY-CENTRIC FEATURE EXTRACTION AND ASSOCIATED DISCONTINUITY METRICS

• US 20100145691A1
• Filed: 12/08/2009
• Published: 06/10/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 10/23/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Jerome R. Bellegarda
• Original Assignee: Jerome R. Bellegarda
• Inventors: Bellegarda, Jerome R.
• Granted Patent: US 7,930,172 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/211
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/187 Phonemic context, e.g. pronunciation rules, phonotactical constraints or phoneme n-grams
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 25/90 Pitch determination of speech signals

Abstract

Portions from time-domain speech segments are extracted. Feature vectors that represent the portions in a vector space are created. The feature vectors incorporate phase information of the portions. A distance between the feature vectors in the vector space is determined. In one aspect, the feature vectors are created by constructing a matrix W from the portions and decomposing the matrix W. In one aspect, decomposing the matrix W comprises extracting global boundary-centric features from the portions. In one aspect, the portions include at least one pitch period. In another aspect, the portions include centered pitch periods.

Claims

1. A machine-implemented method comprising:

extracting portions from time-domain speech segments, wherein the portions include one or more pitch periods of at least one phoneme;

ecreating feature vectors that represent the portions in a vector space, the feature vectors incorporating phase information in a time domain of the portions, wherein the creating feature vectors comprises constructing a mathematical representation of the portions;

determining at least one distance between the feature vectors in the vector space, the at least one distance representing a discontinuity between the portions; and

storing information representing the discontinuity in a discontinuity table that is configured to be used in a speech synthesis process.