International Business Machines Corporation

Takashi Saito

Masaharu Sakamoto

Shichiro Miyashita

Masaaki Okochi

In generation of an intonation pattern of a speech synthesis, a speech synthesis system is capable of providing a highly natural speech and capable of reproducing speech characteristics of a speaker flexibly and accurately by effectively utilizing FO patterns of actual speech accumulated in a database. An intonation generation method generates an intonation of synthesized speech for text by estimating, based on language information of the text and based on the estimated outline of the intonation, and then selects an optimum intonation pattern from a database which stores intonation patterns of actual speech. Speech characteristics recorded in advance are reflected in an estimation of an outline of the intonation pattern and selection of a waveform element of a speech.

Intonation generation method, speech synthesis apparatus using the method and voice server

The reception part,outputs the text and the header of the received electronic mail to the voice synthesizing part,. The voice font switching part,outputs the sander ID contained in the header to the voice font searching part,. The voice font searching part,searches the voice feature data in the voice font database part,to have voice feature data in which the user ID contained in the header of the voice feature data matches the sender ID sent to the rhythm control part,and the voice generating part,. The rhythm control part,, the voice generating part,and the voice output part,read the content of the text in a voice feature indicated by the phonemes contained in the supplied voice feature data and generates a voice signal characterized by rhythm data contained in the header of the voice feature data for output.

Voice mail system, voice synthesizing device and method therefor

To synthesize speech, which is clear and high in naturalness, in a Japanese-language speech synthesis system by improving not only phoneme information but also rhythm information. In the Japanese-language, the independent word speech and the adjunct word speech are remarkably different in speech characteristic. The difference in speech characteristics between them is clearly observed, particularly in rhythmical elements such as the intensity, speech, and pitch of speech. From this fact, there is provided a new rule synthesis method which uses as a speech synthesis unit an adjunct word chain unit comprising a chain of one or more adjunct words and which is capable of synthesizing speech whose naturalness is high. The portion other than the adjunct word portion, i.e., the independent word portion, is constituted in a CV/VC unit.

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Tokyo-to, Japan

Takashi Saito