IDENTIFYING NATURAL SPEECH PAUSES IN A TEXT STRING

摘要

There is described a method (400) for automatically identifying natural speech pauses in a text string, the pauses being for use in text to speech conversion performed on an electronic device (100). The method (400) includes obtaining (420) the text string comprising two ends, these ends being a start end and a finish end. Then there is effected a step of analyzing (440) at least one word in the text string to determine if there is a natural speech pause adjacent to the word, the analyzing being based on at least one predefined threshold value for the word, the threshold value being associated with a number of syllables between the word and one of the two ends of the text string. Then there is provided a step of inserting (460) the natural speech pause into a synthesized speech signal output representative of the text string.