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Linguistic prosodic model-based text to speech

  • US 6,961,704 B1
  • Filed: 01/31/2003
  • Issued: 11/01/2005
  • Est. Priority Date: 01/31/2003
  • Status: Expired due to Term
First Claim
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1. A method, comprising:

  • generating at least one linguistic prosodic model, each of the at least one linguistic prosodic model characterizing a corresponding linguistic prosody and being used to facilitate unit selection during text to speech processing, wherein the at least one linguistic prosodic model is generated from the recorded speech of a target speaker;

    receiving an input text for text to speech processing;

    generating, according to the input text, a target unit sequence and a linguistic target which annotates the target units in the target unit sequence with a plurality of linguistic prosodic characteristics so that the speech synthesized in accordance with the target unit sequence and the linguistic target has certain desired prosodic properties; and

    producing synthesized speech using a selected unit sequence determined in accordance with the target unit sequence and the linguistic target based on an estimated joint cost;

    wherein estimating the joint cost comprises computing a linguistic prosody cost based on the at least one linguistic prosodic model;

    computing a context cost based on at least one context cost function;

    computing a mismatch cost based on a syllable position mismatch matrix with elements defining costs associated with different types of syllable position mismatch, a phrase position mismatch matrix with elements defining costs associated with different types of phrase position mismatch, and a stress/pitch accent mismatch matrix with elements defining costs associated with different types of stress/pitch accent mismatch;

    computing a concatenation cost; and

    combining the linguistic prosody cost, the context cost, the mismatch cost, and the concatenation cost to generate the joint cost.

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