Phrase-programmable digital speech system.

摘要

A digital speech processor (200) operates in parallel with a programmable digital computer (102) to generate sequences of variable-length speech phrases and pauses at the request of the computer. A speech memory (214) within the speech processor contains digitally-encoded speech data segments of varying length. A separate command memory region (in 214) accessible to and loadable by the computer, can be loaded with a plurality of commands. When sequentially executed by the speech processor, these commands cause the processor to generate an arbitrary sequence of spoken phrases and pauses without intervention by the computer. Each two-byte command causes the speech processor to retrieve from the speech memory a particular speech data segment and convert it into speech, or to pause for a time interval specified by a number within the command. When the programmable digital computer is not operating the speech processor to synthesize spoken words, the speech and command memory regions are used as auxiliary random access memory to increase the size of the memory space of the computer.