Patent Document ID: 8065150
Application ID: 12172445

Base Claim:
1. A text-to-speech system comprising: at least one processor configured to; accept text input; provide synthetic speech output corresponding to the text input; accept instruction for at least one emotion-based paradigm wherein the instruction adapts the at least one processor to accept at least one emoticon-based command from a user interface that indicates at least one emotion to impart to speech synthesized from at least a portion of the text input; and apply the at least one emotion-based paradigm comprising: selecting at least one segment from a data store of audio segments, the selecting of the at least one segment being based at least in part on the at least one emoticon-based command to assist in imparting the at least one emotion to the speech synthesized from at least the portion of the text input; and altering at least one prosodic pattern to be used in synthetic speech output based at least in part on the at least one emoticon-based command.

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Claim 4:
4. The system according to claim 1 , wherein applying the at least one emotion-based paradigm alters at least one of speed and amplitude in order to affect at least one of: prosody, intonation, and intonation intensity.