Method and apparatus for identifying prosodic word boundaries
First Claim
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1. A method of identifying prosody for a synthesized speech segment that is formed from a string of lexical words, the method comprising:
- converting the string of lexical words into a string of prosodic words through steps comprising dividing at least one lexical word into smaller prosodic words, each prosodic word comprising at least one lexical word and the string of prosodic words having different word boundaries than the string of lexical words; and
identifying the prosody from the string of prosodic words.
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Abstract
A method and computer-readable medium are provided that identify prosodic word boundaries for a text. If the text is unsegmented, it is first segmented into lexical words. The lexical words are then converted into prosodic words using an annotated lexicon to divide large lexical words into smaller words and a model to combine the lexical words and/or the smaller words into larger prosodic words. The boundaries of the resulting prosodic words are used to set the prosody for the synthesized speech.
65 Citations
27 Claims
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1. A method of identifying prosody for a synthesized speech segment that is formed from a string of lexical words, the method comprising:
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converting the string of lexical words into a string of prosodic words through steps comprising dividing at least one lexical word into smaller prosodic words, each prosodic word comprising at least one lexical word and the string of prosodic words having different word boundaries than the string of lexical words; and identifying the prosody from the string of prosodic words. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
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9. A method of training a model for converting a string of lexical words into a string of prosodic words, the method comprising:
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annotating a text comprising the string of lexical words with prosodic word boundaries based on a training speech signal produced by the recitation of the string of lexical words; determining that a pair of lexical words forms a single prosodic word based on the prosodic word boundary annotations; identifying categories for the pair of lexical words; and training the model based on the determination that the pair of lexical words forms a single prosodic word and the categories for the pair of lexical words. - View Dependent Claims (10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18)
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19. A computer-readable storage medium storing computer-executable instructions for causing a computer to perform steps comprising:
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identifying lexical words in a string of characters; identifying prosodic words from the lexical words by concatenating at least two lexical words on the basis of a model wherein concatenating at least two lexical words on the basis of a model comprises; determining at least one category for each lexical word; applying the categories to the model to determine whether to concatenate the lexical words into a prosodic word; and using the prosodic words when setting the prosody for synthesized speech formed from the string of characters. - View Dependent Claims (20, 21, 22, 23, 24)
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25. A method of identifying prosody for a synthesized speech segment that is formed from a string of lexical words, the method comprising:
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converting the string of lexical words into a string of prosodic words by concatenating at least two lexical words in the string of lexical words to form a prosodic word, each prosodic word comprising at least one lexical word and the string of prosodic words having different word boundaries than the string of lexical words, wherein concatenating the two lexical words comprises; identifying at least one category for each lexical word; and determining whether to concatenate the two lexical words based on the categories of the lexical words; and identifying the prosody from the string of prosodic words. - View Dependent Claims (26, 27)
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Specification