Julia Hirschberg
AT&T Bell Labs., Rm. 2D-450, 600 Mountain Ave., Murray Hill, NJ 07974
Appropriate intonational variation is critical for text-to-speech synthesis to convey appropriate meaning and improve naturalness. While in the past it has been thought that a full linguistic analysis is prerequisite to the generation of appropriate intonational features, in recent years considerable progress has been made in assigning prosodic variation in text-to-speech synthesis for unrestricted text, using simple and currently available techniques for text analysis. Techniques for varying pitch range, prominence, and phrasing based on such text analysis will be discussed. Also discussed will be techniques, such as phrasing and accent assignment procedures. Such automatic training allows quicker development of new prosodic variation procedures and also allows such procedures to be tailored to particular speaking styles or applications.