Speech engine

摘要

A speech engine for producing synthetic speech from an input in convention orthography. The speech engine analyses the input data into small elements which are used to produce the synthetic speech. The analysis is carried out with the aid of a skeletal database 11 and a plurality of symbolic processor 12-16 each of which is adapted to preform one linguistic task. Each processor 13-16 obtains its data from the database 11 (processor 12 obtains its data from an input buffer 10). Each processor returns its results to the database 11. The database 11 is organised in accordance with the linguistic structures so that the results and intermediate results are not only stored but the linguistic relationships are also available. Preferably the database 11 is formed of a plurality of storage modules (1/1-5/7) each of which has an address. Each module has a register 100 which holds an item of data being either an intermediary or final result. In addition each module contains addresses of related modules 101, 102, 103 whereby the linguistic structure of the sentence is defined.