Patent Document ID: 9824681
Application ID: 14483153

Base Claim:
1. An apparatus for text-to-speech conversion comprising: a neutral duration prediction block comprising computer hardware configured to generate an emotionally neutral representation of a script, the emotionally neutral representation comprising a neutral duration associated with each of a plurality of phonemes; and a duration adjustment block comprising computer hardware configured to apply a duration adjustment factor to each neutral duration to generate a transformed duration sequence, the duration adjustment factor being dependent on an emotion type and a linguistic-contextual identity of the corresponding phoneme; a neutral trajectory prediction block comprising computer hardware configured to generate a neutral fundamental frequency (F 0 ) prediction and a neutral spectrum prediction for each adjusted duration of the transformed duration sequence; and a trajectory adjustment block comprising computer hardware configured to apply an F 0 adjustment factor to each neutral F 0 prediction and a spectrum adjustment factor to each neutral spectrum prediction to generate a transformed representation, each of the F 0 adjustment factor and the spectrum adjustment factor being dependent on the emotion type and the linguistic-contextual identity of the corresponding phoneme.

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Claim 3:
3. The apparatus of claim 1 , further comprising a memory storing a neutral decision tree and an emotion-specific decision tree distinct from the neutral decision tree, the neutral duration prediction block further configured to retrieve the duration of each phoneme from the neutral decision tree, and the duration adjustment block configured to retrieve an emotion-specific adjustment factor for adjusting each duration of each phoneme from the emotion-specific decision tree.