Method and apparatus for speech synthesis without prosody modification
First Claim
1. A method of selecting sentences for reading into a training speech corpus used in speech synthesis, the method comprising:
- identifying a set of prosodic context information for each of a set of speech units;
determining a frequency of occurrence for each distinct context vector that appears in a very large text corpus;
using the frequency of occurrence of the context vectors to identify a list of necessary context vectors; and
selecting sentences in the large text corpus for reading into the training speech corpus, each selected sentence containing at least one necessary context vector.
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Abstract
A speech synthesizer is provided that concatenates stored samples of speech units without modifying the prosody of the samples. The present invention is able to achieve a high level of naturalness in synthesized speech with a carefully designed training speech corpus by storing samples based on the prosodic and phonetic context in which they occur. In particular, some embodiments of the present invention limit the training text to those sentences that will produce the most frequent sets of prosodic contexts for each speech unit. Further embodiments of the present invention also provide a multi-tier selection mechanism for selecting a set of samples that will produce the most natural sounding speech.
199 Citations
6 Claims
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1. A method of selecting sentences for reading into a training speech corpus used in speech synthesis, the method comprising:
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identifying a set of prosodic context information for each of a set of speech units;
determining a frequency of occurrence for each distinct context vector that appears in a very large text corpus;
using the frequency of occurrence of the context vectors to identify a list of necessary context vectors; and
selecting sentences in the large text corpus for reading into the training speech corpus, each selected sentence containing at least one necessary context vector. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
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Specification