RECOGNITION DICTIONARY CREATING DEVICE, VOICE RECOGNITION DEVICE, AND VOICE SYNTHESIZER

• US 20120203553A1
• Filed: 01/22/2010
• Published: 08/09/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 01/22/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
• Original Assignee: Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
• Inventors: Maruta, Yuzo
• Granted Patent: US 9,177,545 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/243
• CPC Class Codes: C01G 41/00 Compounds of tungsten
• CPC Class Codes: C01P 2006/80 Compositional purity
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/08 Text analysis or generation of parameters for speech synthesis out of text, e.g. grapheme to phoneme translation, prosody generation or stress or intonation determination
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/06 Creation of reference templates; Training of speech recognition systems, e.g. adaptation to the characteristics of the speaker's voice G10L15/14 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/187 Phonemic context, e.g. pronunciation rules, phonotactical constraints or phoneme n-grams

Abstract

A recognition dictionary creating device includes a user dictionary in which a phoneme label string of an inputted voice is registered and an interlanguage acoustic data mapping table in which a correspondence between phoneme labels in different languages is defined, and refers to the interlanguage acoustic data mapping table to convert the phoneme label string registered in the user dictionary and expressed in a language set at the time of creating the user dictionary into a phoneme label string expressed in another language which the recognition dictionary creating device has switched.

Claims

1. A recognition dictionary creating device comprising:

an acoustic analysis unit for performing an acoustic analysis on a voice signal of an inputted voice to output a time series of acoustic features;

an acoustic standard pattern storage unit for storing acoustic standard patterns showing standard acoustic features for each language;

an acoustic data matching unit for comparing the time series of acoustic features of said inputted voice which are inputted thereto from said acoustic analysis unit with the acoustic standard patterns stored in said acoustic standard pattern storage unit to create a phoneme label string of said inputted voice;

a user dictionary storage unit for storing a user dictionary in which said phoneme label string of said inputted voice created by said acoustic data matching unit is registered;

a language storage unit for storing information showing a language of the phoneme label string which is registered in said user dictionary;

a language switching unit for switching from a language to another language;

a mapping table storage unit for storing a mapping table in which a correspondence between phoneme labels in different languages is defined; and

a phoneme label string converting unit for referring to the mapping table stored in said mapping table storage unit to convert the phoneme label string registered in said user dictionary and expressed in the language shown by the information stored in said language storage unit into a phoneme label string expressed in the other language which said language switching unit has switched.

2. A voice recognition device comprising:

an acoustic analysis unit for performing an acoustic analysis on a voice signal of an inputted voice to output a time series of acoustic features;

an acoustic standard pattern storage unit for storing acoustic standard patterns showing standard acoustic features for each language;

an acoustic data matching unit for comparing the time series of acoustic features of said inputted voice which are inputted thereto from said acoustic analysis unit with the acoustic standard patterns stored in said acoustic standard pattern storage unit to create a phoneme label string of said inputted voice;

a user dictionary storage unit for storing a user dictionary in which said phoneme label string of said inputted voice created by said acoustic data matching unit is registered;

a language storage unit for storing information showing a language of the phoneme label string which is registered in said user dictionary;

a language switching unit for switching from a language to another language;

a mapping table storage unit for storing a mapping table in which a correspondence between phoneme labels in different languages is defined;

a phoneme label string converting unit for referring to the mapping table stored in said mapping table storage unit to convert the phoneme label string registered in said user dictionary and expressed in the language shown by the information stored in said language storage unit into a phoneme label string expressed in the other language to which said language switching unit has switched;

a general dictionary storage unit for storing a general dictionary having a vocabulary expressed by said acoustic standard patterns;

a dictionary comparing unit for comparing the phoneme label string of said inputted voice created by said acoustic data matching unit with said general dictionary and said user dictionary to specify a word which is most similar to the phoneme label string of said inputted voice from said general dictionary and said user dictionary; and

a recognition result output unit for outputting the word specified by said dictionary comparing unit as a voice recognition result.

3. A voice synthesizer comprising:

an acoustic analysis unit for performing an acoustic analysis on a voice signal of an inputted voice to output a time series of acoustic features;

an acoustic standard pattern storage unit for storing acoustic standard patterns showing standard acoustic features for each language;

an acoustic data matching unit for comparing the time series of acoustic features of said inputted voice which are inputted thereto from said acoustic analysis unit with the acoustic standard patterns stored in said acoustic standard pattern storage unit to create a phoneme label string of said inputted voice;

a user dictionary storage unit for storing a user dictionary in which said phoneme label string of said inputted voice created by said acoustic data matching unit is registered;

a language storage unit for storing information showing a language of the phoneme label string which is registered in said user dictionary;

a language switching unit for switching from a language to another language;

a mapping table storage unit for storing a mapping table in which a correspondence between phoneme labels in different languages is defined;

a phoneme label string converting unit for referring to the mapping table stored in said mapping table storage unit to convert the phoneme label string registered in said user dictionary and expressed in the language shown by the information stored in said language storage unit into a phoneme label string expressed in the other language to which said language switching unit has switched;

a text input unit for inputting a text;

a registered word part detecting unit for detecting a word part corresponding to the phoneme label string registered in said user dictionary from a character string of the text inputted from said text input unit;

a registered word replacing unit for replacing said word part detected by said registered word part detecting unit with the phoneme label string acquired from said user dictionary and corresponding to said word part;

a general dictionary replacing unit for replacing a part of the character string of said text other than said word part detected by said registered word part detecting unit with a phoneme label string of a corresponding word in said general dictionary; and

a voice synthesis unit for creating a synthetic voice of said text from the phoneme label strings of said text which are acquired by said registered word replacing unit and said general dictionary replacing unit.

4. A recognition dictionary creating device comprising:

an acoustic analysis unit for performing an acoustic analysis on a voice signal of an inputted voice to output a time series of acoustic features;

an acoustic standard pattern storage unit for storing acoustic standard patterns showing standard acoustic features for each language;

an acoustic standard pattern setting unit for selecting acoustic standard patterns for a preset language from among the acoustic standard patterns stored in said acoustic standard pattern storage unit;

an acoustic data matching unit for comparing the time series of acoustic features of said inputted voice which are inputted thereto from said acoustic analysis unit with the acoustic standard patterns for the language which are selected by said acoustic standard pattern setting unit to create a phoneme label string of said inputted voice;

a user dictionary storage unit for storing a user dictionary in which said phoneme label string of said inputted voice created by said acoustic data matching unit is registered;

a language switching unit for switching from a language to another language;

a mapping table storage unit for storing a mapping table in which a correspondence between phoneme labels in different languages is defined; and

a phoneme label string converting unit for referring to the mapping table stored in said mapping table storage unit to convert the phoneme label string registered in said user dictionary and expressed in the language selected by said acoustic standard pattern setting unit into a phoneme label string expressed in the other language to which said language switching unit has switched.

5. A voice recognition device comprising:

an acoustic analysis unit for performing an acoustic analysis on a voice signal of an inputted voice to output a time series of acoustic features;

an acoustic standard pattern storage unit for storing acoustic standard patterns showing standard acoustic features for each language;

an acoustic standard pattern setting unit for selecting acoustic standard patterns for a preset language from among the acoustic standard patterns stored in said acoustic standard pattern storage unit;

an acoustic data matching unit for comparing the time series of acoustic features of said inputted voice which are inputted thereto from said acoustic analysis unit with the acoustic standard patterns for the language which are selected by said acoustic standard pattern setting unit to create a phoneme label string of said inputted voice;

a user dictionary storage unit for storing a user dictionary in which said phoneme label string of said inputted voice created by said acoustic data matching unit is registered;

a language switching unit for switching from a language to another language;

a mapping table storage unit for storing a mapping table in which a correspondence between phoneme labels in different languages is defined;

a phoneme label string converting unit for referring to the mapping table stored in said mapping table storage unit to convert the phoneme label string registered in said user dictionary and expressed in the language selected by said acoustic standard pattern setting unit into a phoneme label string expressed in the other language to which said language switching unit has switched;

a general dictionary storage unit for storing a general dictionary having a vocabulary expressed by said acoustic standard patterns;

a dictionary comparing unit for comparing the phoneme label string of said inputted voice created by said acoustic data matching unit with said general dictionary and said user dictionary to specify a word which is most similar to the phoneme label string of said inputted voice from said general dictionary and said user dictionary; and

a recognition result output unit for outputting the word specified by said dictionary comparing unit as a voice recognition result.

6. A voice synthesizer comprising:

an acoustic analysis unit for performing an acoustic analysis on a voice signal of an inputted voice to output a time series of acoustic features;

an acoustic standard pattern storage unit for storing acoustic standard patterns showing standard acoustic features for each language;

an acoustic standard pattern setting unit for selecting acoustic standard patterns for a preset language from among the acoustic standard patterns stored in said acoustic standard pattern storage unit;

an acoustic data matching unit for comparing the time series of acoustic features of said inputted voice which are inputted thereto from said acoustic analysis unit with the acoustic standard patterns for the language which are selected by said acoustic standard pattern setting unit to create a phoneme label string of said inputted voice;

a user dictionary storage unit for storing a user dictionary in which said phoneme label string of said inputted voice created by said acoustic data matching unit is registered;

a language switching unit for switching from a language to another language;

a mapping table storage unit for storing a mapping table in which a correspondence between phoneme labels in different languages is defined;

a phoneme label string converting unit for referring to the mapping table stored in said mapping table storage unit to convert the phoneme label string registered in said user dictionary and expressed in the language selected by said acoustic standard pattern setting unit into a phoneme label string expressed in the other language to which said language switching unit has switched;

a text input unit for inputting a text;

a registered word part detecting unit for detecting a word part corresponding to the phoneme label string registered in said user dictionary from a character string of the text inputted from said text input unit;

a registered word replacing unit for replacing said word part detected by said registered word part detecting unit with the phoneme label string acquired from said user dictionary and corresponding to said word part;

a general dictionary replacing unit for replacing a part of the character string of said text other than said word part detected by said registered word part detecting unit with a phoneme label string of a corresponding word in said general dictionary; and

a voice synthesis unit for creating a synthetic voice of said text from the phoneme label strings of said text which are acquired by said registered word replacing unit and said general dictionary replacing unit.