Generating Intonation Contours Using Tonal Speciications 1 Phonological Speciication and Phonetic Models

We present a novel approach to intonation modelling for speech synthesis based on a two-layer technique. The generator component of a concept-to-speech system produces an abstract phonological representation of intonation based on GToBI interpreting the linguistic and discourse information available. This abstract representation must be translated into concrete acoustic parameters. The paper describes how this mapping is achieved with the use of stylized F0 contours. Modelling intonation, i.e., specifying adequate fundamental frequency (F0) contours , remains a challenging task for speech synthesis. In our concept-to-speech system VieCtoS rich linguistic information is available for utterances to be produced. This enables the production of natural and functionally adequate intonation. To this end the generator of the system has to produce an abstract phonological representation of intonation that in turn must be translated into concrete acoustic parameters. To qualitatively describe intonation, we employ the Tone Sequence Model (TSM) 10] which has become the prevalent phono-logical model. Thus, insights and results from current linguistic research can be directly integrated into our work on speech synthesis. In particular, we are using GToBI (German ToBI) 14] an oospring of the original ToBI (Tone and Break Indices) 3] throughout the linguistic generation process and the phonological post-processing 2], which comprises the following inventory of tones: H* `Peak accent' L* `Low accent' L+H* `Steep rise' L*+H`Rise', peak behind accented syllable H+L* Downstep to low range H+!H* Downstep to mid range L? H? Phrase tones L% H% Boundary tones ? ? ? The work reported here has been carried out within the project \Phonology-Acoustics-Conversion for Concept-to-Speech" (FWF P10822) funded by the Austrian Fonds zur FF orderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung. Financial support for the OFAI is provided by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Transport.