A System for Analysis of Large Scale Speech Data for the Development of Rules of Intonation for Speech Synthesis

Abstract

For providing naturalness in synthesized speech it is imperative to give appropriate intonation on the synthesized sentences. The problem is not with synthesis engines but with the fact that comprehensive intonation rules of natural intonation are not available for any of the major spoken language of India. The knowledge available in this area is primarily subjective with the risk of unintentional personal bias. It lacks plurality in the sense that these do not reflect the natural intonation of common people. It is imperative to derive intonation rules through analysis of large amount of sentences spoken by common people. Manual processing is time consuming and extremely cumbrous. The present paper describes briefly an automated approach for such a task. A pilot study on about 1000 complex and interrogative sentences spoken by five female and four male native speakers is presented. 93% accuracy is obtained for the desired objective.