constructed syllable pitch patterns from phonological linguistic unit string data
First Claim
1. A speech producing apparatus comprising:
- input means for receiving a sequence of input data, said sequence of input data including a first part containing a sequence of phonological linguistic unit indicia and a second part including primary stress indicia indicative of primary stress, secondary stress indicia indicative of secondary stress, base pitch indicia indicative of a base pitch and rise/fall indicia indicative of a rising or falling intonation;
control means connected to said input means for converting said sequence of input data into a sequence of speech synthesis control parameters including pitch control parameters for control of speech pitch by selection of one of a plurality of predetermined pitch patterns for each syllable grouping of phonological linguistic unit indicia in accordance with said second part of said sequence of input data, said control means includingphonemic memory means for storing speech synthesis parameters corresponding to each of said phonological linguistic unit indicia,pitch parameter generating means for generating pitch parameters for syllable groupings of said sequence of phonological linguistic unit indicia dependent upon said second part of said sequence of input data,recall means operably associated with said phonemic memory means for recalling speech synthesis parameters corresponding to said sequence of phonological linguistic unit indicia, andconcatenation means operably associated with said recall means and said pitch parameter generating means for combining said recalled speech synthesis parameters and said generated pitch parameters corresponding to syllable groupings of said sequence of phonological linguistic unit indicia; and
speech synthesis means connected to said control means for generating one or more audible words of human language corresponding to said speech synthesis control parameters.
1 Assignment
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
The present invention provides an artificial pitch contour to phonological linguistic phoneme unit string data. In the event that the phonological linguistic string data includes some information on intonation contour, such as primary accent, secondary accents and rising or falling intonation mode data, this data is employed along with a determination of syllable type for each syllable to assign one of a predetermined plurality of pitch patterns to each syllable. If such intonation data is not available, as for example in a bar code or text-to-speech system, then primary and secondary accent data are generated based upon the presence or absence of strong vowels involved in word stress syllables. This invention is most useful in improving the spoken intonation contour in low data rate speech applications in which some intonation data is available.
-
Citations
13 Claims
-
1. A speech producing apparatus comprising:
-
input means for receiving a sequence of input data, said sequence of input data including a first part containing a sequence of phonological linguistic unit indicia and a second part including primary stress indicia indicative of primary stress, secondary stress indicia indicative of secondary stress, base pitch indicia indicative of a base pitch and rise/fall indicia indicative of a rising or falling intonation; control means connected to said input means for converting said sequence of input data into a sequence of speech synthesis control parameters including pitch control parameters for control of speech pitch by selection of one of a plurality of predetermined pitch patterns for each syllable grouping of phonological linguistic unit indicia in accordance with said second part of said sequence of input data, said control means including phonemic memory means for storing speech synthesis parameters corresponding to each of said phonological linguistic unit indicia, pitch parameter generating means for generating pitch parameters for syllable groupings of said sequence of phonological linguistic unit indicia dependent upon said second part of said sequence of input data, recall means operably associated with said phonemic memory means for recalling speech synthesis parameters corresponding to said sequence of phonological linguistic unit indicia, and concatenation means operably associated with said recall means and said pitch parameter generating means for combining said recalled speech synthesis parameters and said generated pitch parameters corresponding to syllable groupings of said sequence of phonological linguistic unit indicia; and speech synthesis means connected to said control means for generating one or more audible words of human language corresponding to said speech synthesis control parameters. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12)
-
-
13. A speech producing apparatus comprising:
-
input means for receiving a sequence of input data corresponding to one or more words in written human language; text to phonological linguistic unit conversion means connected to said input means for generating a sequence of phonological linguistic unit indicia and word boundary indicia corresponding to said sequence of input data; word stress determining means connected to said text to phonological linguistic unit conversion means for determining a word stress syllable for each word dependent upon the type and location of vowel phonological linguistic unit indicia in said word; phrase stress determining means connected to said text to phonological linguistic unit conversion means and said word stress determining means for generating one primary stress indicia and zero or more secondary stress indicia for each phrase dependent upon the vowel types of said word stress syllables of said words in the phrase and for generating a rise/fall indicia indicative of a rising or falling intonation dependent on the end punctuation of the phrase; control means connected to said text to phonological linguistic unit conversion means and said phrase stress determining means for generating a sequence of speech synthesis parameters including pitch control parameters for control of speech pitch by selection of one of a plurality of predetermined pitch patterns for each syllable grouping of phonological linguistic unit indicia in accordance with said primary stress indicia, any secondary stress indicia and said rise/fall indicia, said control means including phonemic memory means for storing speech synthesis parameters corresponding to each of said phonological linguistic unit indicia, pitch parameter generating mans for generating pitch parameters for syllable groupings of said sequence of phonological linguistic unit indicia dependent upon said primary stress indicia, any secondary stress indicia and said rise/fall indicia associated with said sequence of phonological linguistic unit indicia, recall means operably associated with said phonemic memory means for recalling speech synthesis parameters corresponding to said sequence of phonological linguistic unit indicia, and concatenation means operably associated with said recall means and said pitch parameter generating means for combining said recalled speech synthesis parameters and said generated pitch parameters corresponding to syllable groupings of said sequence of phonological linguistic unit indicia; and speech synthesis means connected to said control means for generating one or more audible words of human languaage corresponding to said speech synthesis parameters.
-
Specification