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PRINTED DATA TO SPEECH SYNTHESIZER USING PHONEME-PAIR COMPARISON

  • US 3,632,887 A
  • Filed: 12/31/1969
  • Issued: 01/04/1972
  • Est. Priority Date: 12/31/1968
  • Status: Expired due to Term
First Claim
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1. A machine for converting a text printed in literal characters into speech comprising:

  • means for sequentially converting the literal characters of said text into binary-coded characters;

    a store of coded phonemes;

    means for sequentially comparing each of said coded characters to said coded phonemes and selecting from the coded phoneme store the phoneme equivalent to this character;

    means for sequentially comparing a group of successive coded characters to said coded phonemes and selecting from the coded phoneme store the phoneme equivalent to this character group when the comparison of the same group except its last character to the coded phonemes has resulted in no coded phoneme selection;

    an address matrix to which are sequentially applied all selected phonemes, the last phoneme of a phoneme-pair being the first phoneme of the following phoneme-pair;

    a store of coded word assemblies respectively representing the spectrograms of said coded phoneme pairs and consisting in the registration of said spectrograms in the time-frequency plane in which the amplitude at a point of said time-frequency plane is selectively represented by either a one or a zero, according to the value of the spectrogram amplitude at said point with respect to a given reference value, whereby each phoneme-pair spectrogram is coded into an assembly of N-bit binary words whose bits represent the values of the amplitude at N-points regularly spaced apart along a line parallel to the frequency axis of the spectrogram;

    means controlled by said address matrix for sequentially extracting from said coded word assembly store the coded word assembly corresponding to the addresses obtained at the output of said matrix;

    a plurality of n oscillators having frequencies spaced apart in the speech band;

    means for successively controlling said oscillators respectively by the bits of said extracted coded words;

    a sound-reproducing means; and

    means for connecting to said sound-reprodUcing means the output signals of said oscillators.

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