Patent Document ID: 10147416
Application ID: 14963912

Base Claim:
1. A computer-implemented method for performing text-to-speech (TTS) processing on sections of a textual work, the method comprising: processing a textual work to determine paragraph breaks within the textual work; storing a plurality of paragraph indicators, the paragraph indicators corresponding to the paragraph breaks; receiving first audio data from a user device, the audio data corresponding to a spoken utterance from a user; performing speech recognition processing on the first audio data; determining that the first audio data corresponds to a request to play audio corresponding to the textual work; determining a start position within the textual work at which playing of the audio corresponding to the textual work is to begin, the start position corresponding to the request; determining that the start position is between a first paragraph indicator and a second paragraph indicator, wherein the first paragraph indicator corresponds to a beginning of a first paragraph and the second paragraph indicator corresponds to a break between the first paragraph and a second paragraph; determining first text corresponding to an entirety of the first paragraph, wherein the first text includes a first portion that precedes the last user position and a second portion that follows the last user position; with a TTS engine configured to synthesize speech based on input text, performing TTS processing on the first text to determine second audio data corresponding to the second portion, the TTS processing including: accessing stored data that indicates how respective phonetic units in processed text are to be pronounced based at least in part on positions of the respective phonetic units relative to other elements in the processed text, determining, using the stored data and the first portion of the first text, at least one prosodic characteristic corresponding to at least one phonetic unit associated with the second portion of the first text, and determining the second audio data based at least in part on the at least one prosodic characteristic; determining an audio output component corresponding to the request; and causing audio, corresponding to the second audio data and beginning with audio corresponding to the second portion, to be output using the audio output component.

---

Claim 4:
4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein determining the second audio data further comprises: selecting, based at least in part on features of a linguistic representation of the second portion, a plurality of pre-stored audio waveforms in a database; and concatenating the plurality of pre-stored audio waveforms together to form the second audio data.