Patent ID: 6505158
Filing Date: 2003-01-07
Classification: G10L

Abstract:
A method of synthesizing speech from text input using unit selection, the method comprising the steps of:a) creating a triphone preselection database from an input stream of speech synthesis by collecting units observed to occur in particular triphone contexts, a triphone comprising a sequence of three phoneme units; b) receiving a stream of input text to be synthesized; c) converting the received input text into a sequence of phonemes by parsing the input text into identifiable syntactic phrases; d) comparing the sequence of phonemes formed in step c), also considering neighboring phonemes so as to form input triphones, to a plurality of commonly occurring triphones stored in the triphone preselection database to select a plurality of N phoneme units as candidates for synthesis; e) selecting a set of candidates of step d) by applying a cost process to each path through the plurality of N phoneme units associated with each phoneme sequence and choosing a least cost set of phoneme units; f) processing the least cost phoneme units selected in step e) into synthesized speech; and g) outputting the synthesized speech to an output device.