Patent ID: 7765103

Claim:
A rule based speech synthesis apparatus comprising speech element set storage means for storing a plurality of phoneme strings, each having a vowel phoneme on a boundary thereof, as a speech element, along with feature parameters, as a speech element set; speech element selection means for reading out acoustic feature parameters of a corresponding speech element from said speech element set storage means, based on an input phoneme string; target parameter storage means having stored therein representative acoustic feature parameters from one vowel to another; parameter correction means for reading out a target parameter comprising acoustic parameters from one vowel to another for a vowel from said target parameter storage means in response to the acoustic feature parameter of the speech element output from said speech element selection means and for correcting the acoustic feature parameter of said speech element based on said target parameters, the acoustic feature parameter being corrected according to at least one predetermined equation wherein the corrected acoustic feature parameter is a function of at least a first target value for a parameter at a leading edge of said speech element and a second target value for a parameter at a trailing edge of said speech element, the corrected acoustic feature having a value equal to said first target value at said leading edge of said speech element and a value equal to said second target value at said trailing edge of said speech element; time-series data generating means for concatenating plural acoustic feature parameters output from said parameter correction means to generate time series data of the acoustic feature parameters; and speech synthesizing means for uttering and outputting speech signals of the synthesized speech corresponding to the input phoneme strings in accordance with time-series data of the acoustic feature parameters, corresponding to the input phoneme strings, generated by said time-series data generating means.