Patent Document ID: 4797930
Application ID: 06548400

Base Claim:
1. A speech producing apparatus comprising: input means for receiving a sequence of input data, said sequence of input data including a first part containing a sequence of phonological linguistic unit indicia and a second part including primary stress indicia indicative of primary stress, secondary stress indicia indicative of secondary stress, base pitch indicia indicative of a base pitch and rise/fall indicia indicative of a rising or falling intonation; control means connected to said input means for converting said sequence of input data into a sequence of speech synthesis control parameters including pitch control parameters for control of speech pitch by selection of one of a plurality of predetermined pitch patterns for each syllable grouping of phonological linguistic unit indicia in accordance with said second part of said sequence of input data, said control means including phonemic memory means for storing speech synthesis parameters corresponding to each of said phonological linguistic unit indicia, pitch parameter generating means for generating pitch parameters for syllable groupings of said sequence of phonological linguistic unit indicia dependent upon said second part of said sequence of input data, recall means operably associated with said phonemic memory means for recalling speech synthesis parameters corresponding to said sequence of phonological linguistic unit indicia, and concatenation means operably associated with said recall means and said pitch parameter generating means for combining said recalled speech synthesis parameters and said generated pitch parameters corresponding to syllable groupings of said sequence of phonological linguistic unit indicia; and speech synthesis means connected to said control means for generating one or more audible words of human language corresponding to said speech synthesis control parameters.

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Claim 5:
5. A speech producing apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein: said control means further includes syllable classification means for classifying each syllable into one of a predetermined set of classes, said selection of pitch pattern for each syllable being dependent upon the syllable class.