Patent ID: 8478595

Claim:
A fundamental frequency pattern generation apparatus comprising: a computer apparatus comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium and a processor; a first storage unit comprising the non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing a plurality of representative vectors each corresponding to a prosodic control unit and having a first section including a plurality of sample points and a section except for the first section, wherein the first section is a section of the representative vector, which starts with one of an accent nucleus phoneme, an accent nucleus succeeding adjacent phoneme, and an accent nucleus succeeding second phoneme and ends with one of a prosodic control unit end phoneme, a prosodic control unit end preceding adjacent phoneme, and prosodic control unit end preceding second phoneme; a second storage unit comprising the non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing a rule to select a representative vector corresponding to an input context; a selection unit configured to select the representative vector corresponding to the input context from the plurality of representative vectors by applying the rule to the input context and output the selected representative vector; a calculation unit comprising the processor configured to calculate, using a mapping function, an expansion/contraction ratio for a number of phonemes included in the first section of the selected representative vector based on first designated values for a number of phonemes included in a first portion of a fundamental frequency pattern to be generated from the first section of the selected representative vector, the first designated values being required for the fundamental frequency pattern to be generated, such that the number of the phonemes included in the first section of the selected representative vector equals the first designated value, and an expansion/contraction unit comprising the processor configured to expand/contract the number of the phonemes included in the first section of the selected representative vector based on the expansion/contraction ratio, and then to expand/contract each of the phoneme durations of the phonemes included in all sections of the selected representative vector after the number of the phonemes included in the first section are expanded/contracted, based on second designated values corresponding to phoneme durations of all phonemes included in all portions of the fundamental frequency pattern, the second designated values being required for the fundamental frequency pattern to be generated, such that the phoneme durations of the phonemes included in all sections of the selected representative vector after the number of the phonemes included in the first section are expanded/contracted equal the second designated values corresponding to the phoneme durations, to generate the fundamental frequency pattern.