Comparative investigation of peak alignment in Polish and German unit selection corpora

This paper presents a comparative study on the temporal alignment of pitch peaks of H*L accents in Polish and German. Speech material used in the study came from the unit selection synthesis corpora of the Polish voice module of the BOSS system and the IMS German Festival TTS system. The major factors investigated were concerned with the influence of syllable structure on the one hand, as well as phrasal and tonal environment on the other hand. For the analysis of Polish falling accents, the effects of accent type, phrase type, and word position were also taken into account. Results show that in both languages, pitch peak placement is consistently affected by onset and coda type and by the tonal context (H or L tonal target preceding or following). Also, the position of the accent in the phrase is found to have a significant influence. Additionally, the results also reveal the difference between the two Polish falling pitch accents (static and dynamic).