Analysis and synthesis of CV syllables in Hindi

Abstract

Twenty‐nine consonants of frequent occurrence in Hindi were combined with a cardinal vowel /ɑ/ to make CV‐type syllables. These were spoken by a standard male speaker. The spectral analysis was done using a sound spectrograph and the covariance method of LPC analysis. The formant frequencies and their bandwidths were obtained in segments of varying duration from 8 to 20 ms depending upon the nature of acoustic information in the syllable. A program called “SNDSYS” was used to estimate the fundamental frequency and overall amplitude values at every 10‐ms duration. These parameters were used to give a basic acoustic description and frame rules for consonant‐vowel combinations. A P.C. version of Klatt's synthesizer called “KLPC” was used to synthesize the CV syllables. There are over 40 parameters and constants that are used in the default synthesizer configuration. Based on the acoustic description of different sounds, various parameters were updated at an interval of 5 to 10 ms to generate different consonant‐vowel combinations. The configuration file obtained for each syllable (named as documentation file) was further used to update and change the parameters to improve the quality of synthesized speech. Special considerations related to the synthesis of voiced and unvoiced aspirated consonants of Hindi are also discussed.