Method for text-to-pronunciation conversion
AssigneeIndustrial Technology Research Institute
InventorsNien-Chih Wang, Ching-Hsieh Lee
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method for text-to-pronunciation conversion includes a process for searching grapheme-phoneme segments and a three-stage process of text-to-pronunciation conversion. This method looks for a sequence of grapheme-phoneme pairs, which is referred to as a chunk, via a trained pronouncing dictionary, performs grapheme segmentation, chunk marking and a decision process on an input text, and determines a pronouncing sequence for the text. With the chunk marking, the method greatly reduces the search space on the associated phoneme graph, and thereby efficiently enhances the search speed for the candidate chunk sequences. The method keeps a high word-accuracy as well as saves computing time.
Claims12
A method for text-to-pronunciation conversion in a text-to-pronunciation conversion system, comprising:
- a chunk searching process performed in said text-to-pronunciation conversion system for finding a set of possible chunks via a trained pronouncing dictionary, a chunk being defined as a sequence of grapheme-phoneme pairs;
- a grapheme segmentation process performed in said text-to-pronunciation conversion system for generating a grapheme sequence from an input text;
- a chunk sequence marking process performed in said text-to-pronunciation conversion system for generating candidate chunk sequences of said input text from said grapheme sequence and said set of possible chunks;
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- a decision process performed in said text-to-pronunciation conversion system for determining a pronouncing sequence for said input text by scoring said candidate chunk sequences of said input text;
- wherein said decision process further includes a re-verifying process for a phoneme sequence by re-scoring said candidate chunk sequences according to characteristic combination of intra chunks and inter chunks.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.