Concatenating syllables for response generation in spoken language applications

We describe our approach in developing a speech synthesis technique for response generation in domain-specific spoken language applications. Our approach handles two Chinese dialects – Cantonese and Putonghua. We chose the foreign exchange domain, and worked with its constrained vocabulary and response expressions. The syllable is selected to be our basic unit for concatenation. Each unit label includes a two-digit appendix to encode the distinctive features of the left and right coarticulatory context. Our approach attempts to maximize intelligibility and naturalness of the generated responses within the application domain. Hence the synthesized outputs compare favorably with a domain-independent TD-PSOLA synthesizer.