An intonation prediction module for Romanian TTS system, as a prosodic tree generator

Abstract

This paper presents a prosodic prediction module used by the Romanian TtS system in intonation synthesis. The module builds the input data for a prosodic control module that generates the F0 contour of the synthesized utterance. Both modules are based on a functional intonation model. The prediction module implies two main processing steps: identifying prosodic groups at different levels of a prosodic hierarchy and the selection of the melodic contours at each group level. Both processing steps use prosodic indications deduced from the text analysis. The first step is implemented by phrasing submodules that finally generates the utterance tree of the synthesized utterance. The second step refers to submodule that encodes the information that is relevant for the melodic contour selection from a melodic contour dictionary. The data output of the prediction module consists in the prosodic structure of the input text and the melodic contour descriptions at each prosodic units.