Patent ID: 6499014
Filing Date: 2002-12-24
Classification: G10L

Abstract:
A speech synthesis apparatus comprising:a text analyzer operable to generate a phonetic and prosodic symbol string from character information of an input text; a word dictionary storing a reading and an accent of a word; a voice segment dictionary storing a phoneme that is a basic unit of speech; a parameter generator operable to generate synthesizing parameters including at least a phoneme, a duration of the phoneme and a fundamental frequency for the phonetic and prosodic symbol string, the parameter generator including a calculating means operable to obtain a sum of phrase components and a sum of accent components and to calculate a mora average from the sum of the phrase components and the sum of the accent components, and a determining means operable to determine a base pitch from the mora average; and a waveform generator operable to generate a synthesized waveform by making waveform-overlapping referring to the synthesizing parameters generated by the parameter generator and the voice segment dictionary.