Patent Document ID: 8170876
Application ID: 12210338

Base Claim:
1. A speech processing apparatus comprising: an input unit configured to enter a text; a dictionary including sets of a character string which constitutes a word, a phoneme sequence which constitutes pronunciation of the word and a part of speech of the word; a generating unit configured to divide the text into one or more subtexts on the basis of the dictionary and generate speech information including a phoneme sequence for each divided subtext; a determining unit configured to cross-check the speech information of the subtext and a list of speech information stored in advance and determine whether or not to carry out conversion of phonetic sounds which belong to the phonetic sound sequence of the subtext; and a processing unit configured to (1) convert each phonetic sound in the phonetic sound sequence of the subtext, which is determined to be carried out the conversion of phonetic sounds, into a different phonetic sound according to a conversion rules stored in advance and output the same, and (2) output the phonetic sound sequence of the subtext, which is determined not to be carried out the conversion of phonetic sounds, without carrying out the conversion.

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Claim 4:
4. The apparatus according to claim 1 , further comprising: a prosody generating unit configured to generate prosody information including durations and pitch of the phonetic sounds in the phoneme sequence on the basis of the phoneme sequence for each subtext; and a synthesizing unit for generating a synthesized speech from the phoneme sequence and the prosody information for each subtext.