Speech Synthesizers have traditionally been built on carefully read speech that is recorded in studio environment. Such voices are suboptimal for use in noisy conditions, which is inevitable in a majority of deployed speech systems. In this work, we attempt to modify the output of the speech synthesizers to make it more appropriate for noisy environments. Comparison of spectral and prosodic fea...

During interpersonal conversation, both children and adults adapt the basic acoustic-prosodic features of their speech to converge with those of their conversational partner. In this study, 7-to-10year-old children interacted with a conversational interface in which animated characters used text-to-speech output (TTS) to answer questions about marine biology. Analysis of children’s speech to di...

This paper introduces a new concept in speech synthesisers by constructing devices and methods by which they can be operated in real-time. Further development of this concept may lead to an improvement in the conversational capabilities of people with ‘speech communicators’. This paper outlines the current limitations of such systems and then describes the methods used to give the user real-tim...

This study investigates F0 declination as a global-level prosodic phenomenon, establishing a new discourse-based model of prosodic structure in Japanese. The model includes two levels of declination in a hierarchical order: utterance units and prosodic paragraphs, a higher level of declination consisting of embedded declinations. Comparing and contrasting three types of discourse -read speech, ...

This paper describes the Bell Labs Russian text-to-speech system, a concatenative system with extensive text-analysis capabilities. The construction of Russian-specific modules will be discussed, including the text-analysis module, the acoustic inventory, the duration module, and the intonation module.

It was previously observed [1] that the order of presentation of paired stimuli influenced the number of different responses in same-different tasks in speech synthesis evaluation. This paper investigates this phenomenon within the context of cognitive psychology and demonstrates that, as the cognitive psychology literature suggests, there is an effect relating to the prototypicality of the sti...

AT&T Laboratories 16.

It has been known for some time that the acoustic parameters of vowels and consonants change as a result oftheimmediate segmental environment (ref 1 & 2); and indeed, it has been claimed that an interconsonantal vowel is imposed on and only slightly modifies a continuous movement from the initial to the final consonants (ref 3). Whatever the extent of such coarticulatory effects, it is reasonab...