SPEECH SYNTHESIZER HAVING AN ACOUSTIC ELEMENT DATABASE

摘要

A speech synthesis method employs an acoustic element database that is established from phonetic sequences occurring in an interval of a speech signal in establishing the database, trajectories are determined (220) for each of the phonetic sequences containing a phonetic segment that correspond s to a particular phoneme (210). A tolerance region is then identified based o n a concentration of trajectories that correspond to different phoneme sequenc es (230). The acoustic elements for the database (260) are formed from portions of the phonetic sequences by identifying cut points (250) in the phonetic sequences which corespond to time points along the respective trajectories proximate the tolerance region (240). In this manner, it is possible to concatenate the acoustic elements having a common junction phonemes such tha t perceptible discontinuities at the junction phonemes are minimized. Computationally simple and fast methods for determining the tolerance region are also disclosed.