1998 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
A Study on Speech Rate Control of Common Japanese Utterances Based on an Objective and Quantitative Method
| Project/Area Number |
09680404
|
|---|
| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
|
| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
|---|
| Section | 一般 |
|---|
| Research Field |
情報システム学(含情報図書館学)
|
|---|
| Research Institution | Science University of Tokyo |
|---|
Principal Investigator |
OHNO Sumio Science University of Tokyo, Faculty of Research Assistant Industrial Science and Technology, 基礎工学部, 助手 (80256677)
|
|---|
| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
FUJISAKI Hiroya Science University of Tokyo, Faculty of Professor Industrial Science and Technol, 基礎工学部, 教授 (80010776)
|
|---|
| Project Period (FY) |
1997 – 1998
|
| Keywords | speech rate control / local change of speech rate / relative local speech rate / speech synthesis / word accent type / syntactic role / emphasis |
|---|
| Research Abstract |
The aim of the project is to investigate the changes of the local speech rate due to various factors and to derive rules for speech rate control for high-quality speech synthesis. The main results obtained for the two-year period (1997 and 1998) are as follows.
(1) Development of software tools for efficient analysis of a large amount of speech data, and for changing the local speech rate of an utterance according to a given local speech rate profile.
(2) Effect of utterance size on the local speech rate
Comparison of local speech rates of utterances of a 'bunsetsu' phrase both in isolation and in sentence context revealed that the differences are greater toward the end of the sentence, and the pattern of change is affected by the syntactic role of the bunsetsu in question.
(3) Effect of global speech rate on the local speech rate
Analysis of the effect of changes in the global speech rate upon the local speech rate revealed that an increase in global speech rate tends to cause an increase in the local speech rate at the earlier portion of a syllable, while a decrease in global speech rate tends to cause a decrease in the local speech rate at the latter portion of a syllable.
(4) Effect of the word accent type on the local speech rate
Analysis of the local speech rate of words with almost identical segmental structures but different word accent types revealed that the accent type has a significant influence on the time pattern of the local speech rate.
(5) Effects of emphasis on the local speech rate
Analysis of the local speech rate of utterances of the same sentence with different stress positions revealed that the emphasis tends to cause a decrease in the local speech rate at the stressed part of the utterance, and the local decrease is accompanied by a change in the accent component in the fundamental frequency contour.
|
