Speech producing system

An electronic speech-producing system for receiving allophonic code signals representative of allophonic units of speech and for producing audible speech-like sounds corresponding to the allophonic code signals, said speech-producing system comprising:

• allophone library means in which digital signals representative of allophone-defining speech parameters identifying the respective allophone subset variants of each of the recognized phonemes in a given spoken language as modified by the speech environment in which the particular phoneme occurs are stored, said allophone library means being responsive to the allophonic code signals for providing digital signals representative of the particular allophone-defining speech parameters corresponding to said allophonic code signals;
• means operably associated with said allophone library means for concatenating the digital signals in a manner designating stress and intonation patterns and including means for designating a pitch parameter for the allophone-defining speech parameters, wherein the allophone is defined by a plurality of speech data frames each of which comprises allophone-defining speech parameters and wherein a pitch parameter is designated for each speech data frame;
• speech synthesizing means operably coupled to said digital signal-concatenating means for receiving the digital signals representative of allophone-defining speech parameters and providing analog signals representative of synthesized speech corresponding to the digital signals received thereby;
• smoothing means operably associated with said speech synthesizing means for selectively smoothing the transition between respective allophones as defined by pluralities of speech data frames;
• and
• audio output means operably connected to the output of said speech synthesizing means for receiving said analog signals representative of synthesized speech therefrom to produce audible synthesized speech-like sounds having stress and intonation incorporated therein.

An electronic speech-producing system for receiving allophonic code signals representative of allophone speech units and for producing audible speech-like sounds corresponding to the allophonic code signals, said system comprising:

• allophone library means in which digital signals representative of allophone-defining speech parameters identifying the respective allophone subset variants of each of the recognized phonemes in a given spoken language as modified by the speech environment in which the particular phoneme occurs are stored, said allophone library means being responsive to said allophonic code signals for providing digital signals representative of allophone-defining speech parameters corresponding to said allophonic code signals;
• means operably coupled to said allophone library means for concatenating said digital signals provided thereby in a manner designating stress and intonation patterns with respect thereto;
• semiconductor integrated circuit speech synthesizing means operably associated with said concatenating means for receiving said digital signals representative of allophone-defining speech parameters and providing analog signals representative of synthesized speech corresponding to said digital signals;
• and
• audio output means coupled to the output of said semiconductor integrated circuit speech synthesizing means for receiving said analog signals representative of synthesized speech therefrom to produce audible synthesized speech-like sounds with stress and intonation incorporated therein.

A method for producing audible synthesized speech from digital allophonic code signals, said method comprising:

• storing in a memory digital signals representative of allophone-defining speech parameters identifying the respective allophone subset variants of each of the recognized phonemes in a given spoken language as modified by the speech environment in which the particular phoneme occurs;
• reading out from the memory the particular digital signals corresponding to respective allophonic code signals;
• concatenating the read out digital signals;
• providing digitally coded pitch parameters and intonation to the concatenated digital signals;
• transmitting the concatenated digital signals to a speech synthesizer;
• generating analog signals representative of synthesized speech by the speech synthesizer corresponding to the concatenated digital signals received thereby;
• directing the analog signals representative of synthesized speech to an audio output means;
• and
• producing audible synthesized speech-like sounds from the audio output means corresponding to the analog signals generated by the speech synthesizer.