Patent ID: 7143038

Claim:
A speech synthesis system wherein synthesis parameters necessary for speech synthesis are input, and a speech segment combination matching said synthesis parameters is selected from a speech segment inventory and concatenated, thereby generating and outputting a speech waveform for said synthesis parameters, comprising: a speech segment storage unit that stores said speech segment; a speech segment selection information storage unit that, with respect to a given speech unit sequence, correlates with the speech unit sequence information regarding appropriateness of a combination of speech segment data to be selected from among a plurality of speech segment data stored in said speech segment storage unit that synthesizes the speech unit sequence and that stores speech segment selection information; a speech segment selection unit that selects a speech segment combination that is most appropriate for said synthesis parameters from said speech segment storage unit based on speech segment selection information stored in said speech segment selection information storage unit; and a speech synthesis unit that generates and outputs speech waveform data based on a speech segment combination selected by said speech segment selection unit.