Abstract: A speech synthesis method, in which speech units are concatenated using a DB, wherein the speech units to be concatenated are determined and divided into a left speech unit and a right speech unit. The length of an interpolation region of each of the left and right speech units is variably determined. An extension is attached to a right boundary of the left speech unit and an extension to a left boundary of the right speech unit. The locations of pitch marks included in the extension of each of the left and right speech units are aligned so that the pitch marks can fit in the predetermined interpolation region. The left and right speech units are superimposed after fading out the left speech unit and fading in the right speech unit. Accordingly, a determination of whether extra-segmental data exists or not is made, and smoothing concatenation is performed using either an interpolation of existing data or an interpolation of extrapolated data depending on the result of the determination.

Abstract: A speech synthesis method, in which speech units are concatenated using a DB, wherein the speech units to be concatenated are determined and divided into a left speech unit and a right speech unit. The length of an interpolation region of each of the left and right speech units is variably determined. An extension is attached to a right boundary of the left speech unit and an extension to a left boundary of the right speech unit. The locations of pitch marks included in the extension of each of the left and right speech units are aligned so that the pitch marks can fit in the predetermined interpolation region. The left and right speech units are superimposed after fading out the left speech unit and fading in the right speech unit. Accordingly, a determination of whether extra-segmental data exists or not is made, and smoothing concatenation is performed using either an interpolation of existing data or an interpolation of extrapolated data depending on the result of the determination.