Method of speech synthesis
AssigneeSpeech Technology Centre, Limited
InventorMikhail Vasilievich Khitrov
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Abstract
The present invention relates to a method of text-based speech synthesis, wherein at least one portion of a text is specified; the intonation of each portion is determined; target speech sounds are associated with each portion; physical parameters of the target speech sounds are determined; speech sounds most similar in terms of the physical parameters to the target speech sounds are found in a speech database; and speech is synthesized as a sequence of the found speech sounds. The physical parameters of said target speech sounds are determined in accordance with the determined intonation. The present method, when used in a speech synthesizer, allows improved quality of synthesized speech due to precise reproduction of intonation.
Claims14
A method of computerized text-based speech synthesis, wherein
- at least one portion of a text is specified;
- the intonation of each portion is determined;
- target allophones are associated with each portion;
- physical parameters of the target allophones are determined, by a computing device, for each of the target allophones;
- allophones most similar to the target allophones in terms of said physical parameters are found in a speech database;
- speech is synthesized as a sequence of the found allophones, wherein
- the physical parameters of the target allophones are determined according to the determined intonation.
A text-based speech synthesizer comprising
- a speech database containing allophones;
- a specifying module configured to specify at least one portion of a text;
- an intonation determining module configured to determine the intonation of each of the at least one portion;
- a target allophone associating module configured to associate target allophones with each of the at least one portion;
- a target allophone associating module configured to associate target allophones with each of the at least one portion;
- a physical parameter determining module configured to determine physical parameters of the target allophones for each of the target allophone;
- an allophone forming module configured to search for allophones most similar to the target allophones in terms of said physical parameters in the speech database and form a sequence of allophones for an output speech signal on the basis of the allophones found in the database;
- and
- speech signal generating module configured to generated the output speech signal on the basis of the formed sequence of allophones,
- wherein the physical parameter determining module are configured to determine said physical parameters of the target allophones on the basis of the intonation determined by the intonation determining module.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.