Abstract: In accordance with the present invention, a method for providing generation of speech includes the steps of providing input to be acoustically produced, comparing the input to training data or application specific splice files to identify one of words and word sequences corresponding to the input for constructing a phone sequence, using a search algorithm to identify a segment sequence to construct output speech according to the phone sequence and concatenating segments and modifying characteristics of the segments to be substantially equal to requested characteristics. Application specific data is advantageously used to make pertinent information available to synthesize both the phone sequence and the output speech. Also, described is a system for performing operations in accordance with the disclosure.

Abstract: A method for automatically generating pitch contours in a text to speech (TtS) system, the system converting input text into an output acoustic signal simulating natural speech, the method comprising the steps of: storing a plurality of associated stress and pitch level pairs, each of the plurality of pairs including a lexical stress level and a pitch level; calculating lexical stress levels of the input text; comparing the stress levels of the input text to the stored stress levels of the plurality of associated stress and pitch level pairs to find the stored stress levels closest to the stress levels of the input text; and copying the pitch levels associated with the closest stored stress levels of the stress and pitch level pairs to generate the pitch contours of the input text.