Abstract: A system and method generate synthesized speech through concatenation of speech segments that are derived from a large prosodically-rich corpus of speech segments including using an additional dictionary of speech segment identifier sequences.

Abstract: A high quality speech synthesizer in various embodiments concatenates speech waveforms referenced by a large speech database. Speech quality is further improved by speech unit selection and concatenation smoothing.

Abstract: A method of prosody translation is given. A target input symbol sequence is provided, including a first set of speech prosody descriptors. An instance-based learning algorithm is applied to a corpus of speech unit descriptors to select an output symbol sequence representative of the target input symbol sequence and including a second set of speech prosody descriptors. The second set differs from the first set.

Abstract: A synthesis method for concatenative speech synthesis is provided for efficiently concatenating waveform segments in the time-domain. A digital waveform provider produces an input sequence of digital waveform segments. A waveform concatenator concatenates the input segments by using waveform blending within a concatenation zone to synchronize, weight, and overlap-add selected portions of the input segments to produce a single digital waveform. The synchronizing includes determining a minimum weighted energy anchor in the selected portion of each input segment and aligning synchronization peaks in a local vicinity of each anchor.

Abstract: A system and method generate synthesized speech through concatenation of speech segments that are derived from a large prosodically-rich corpus of speech segments including using an additional dictionary of speech segment identifier sequences.

Abstract: A high quality speech synthesizer in various embodiments concatenates speech waveforms referenced by a large speech database. Speech quality is further improved by speech unit selection and concatenation smoothing.

Abstract: A high quality speech synthesizer in various embodiments concatenates speech waveforms referenced by a large speech database. Speech quality is further improved by speech unit selection and concatenation smoothing.

Abstract: A method of prosody translation is given. A target input symbol sequence is provided, including a first set of speech prosody descriptors. An instance-based learning algorithm is applied to a corpus of speech unit descriptors to select an output symbol sequence representative of the target input symbol sequence and including a second set of speech prosody descriptors. The second set differs from the first set.

Abstract: A synthesis method for concatenative speech synthesis is provided for efficiently concatenating waveform segments in the time-domain. A digital waveform provider produces an input sequence of digital waveform segments. A waveform concatenator concatenates the input segments by using waveform blending within a concatenation zone to synchronize, weight, and overlap-add selected portions of the input segments to produce a single digital waveform. The synchronizing includes determining a minimum weighted energy anchor in the selected portion of each input segment and aligning synchronization peaks in a local vicinity of each anchor.

Abstract: A system is disclosed for generating a time scale modification of a digital waveform. A digital waveform provider produces an input digital waveform at a first time resolution, the digital waveform being a sequence of overlapping speech segment windows. A time-domain time scale modification process overlap adds selected windows from the input digital waveform to create an output digital waveform representing a time scale modification of the input digital waveform. The process operates at a second time resolution lower than the first time resolution to determine the relative positions between adjacent windows in the output digital waveform.

Abstract: The present invention describes an apparatus and method for generating phonetico-prosodic parameters of a predetermined message starting from a source message. The predetermined message comprises carriers and phrases. The phonetico-prosodic parameters of the carriers and the phrases are stored in a memory after having been generated off-line. The invention also comprises an apparatus and method for electronically generating a spoken message starting from phonetico-prosodic parameters, stored in said memory. The carriers comprise fixed parts and open slots filled with arguments. The phonetico-prosodic parameters of the arguments to be filled in in the open slots are generated at run time.

Abstract: An improved apparatus for generating a spoken message is of the type formed by (i) first recording speech and (ii) then utilizing the recording so as to obtain at least one carrier, each carrier having at least one fixed part and at least one open slot, and then (iii) inserting an argument into each open slot. The improvement provides a phonetico-prosodic parameter generator for characterizing the message in terms of a sequence of phonetico-prosodic parameters for each carrier. An electronic memory stores the phonetico-prosodic parameters corresponding to each carrier and a controller constructs sequences of phonetico-prosodic parameters corresponding to the argument of each open slot. From the phonetico-prosodic parameters, a phonetics-to-speech converter generates a digital sound wave pattern which is converted, by a D/A converter, into an analog sound wave pattern. An output unit provides audible sound waves corresponding to the analog sound wave pattern.

Abstract: An improved method for generating a spoken message is of the type formed by (i) first recording speech and (ii) then utilizing the recording so as to obtain at least one carrier, each carrier having at least one fixed part and at least one open slot, and then (iii) inserting an argument into each open slot. The improvement involves applying a prosody transplantation technique to the recording in order to obtain a sequence of phonetico-prosodic parameters for each carrier; identifying in each sequence sections of phonetico-prosodic parameters corresponding to the argument of each open slot; and substituting each of the sections by open slot data comprising at least position information indicating the position of each open slot.