Pause Insertion which uses the results of Grammatical Dependency Analysis within a Text-to-Speech Conversion System

Abstract

This is a practice of method which uses results of grammatical dependency analysis within a text-to-speech conversion system to insert pauses. In order to understand the meaning of text which is converted into speech, the appropriate insertion of pauses into phrase boundaries should be required. In previous studies, several approaches using the results of simple analyses such as morphological analysis or analysis of adjoining phrases to determine the position and length of pauses was proposed. In those studies, we often found the speech had inappropriately determined pause positions. In the present method, we introduce a quick Japanese parser into the text analysis, determine the distance and relationship between dependent phrases, and use this information to determine the position and length of pauses. The distance and relationship between dependent phrases is translated into the cost of pause insertion. Each phrase boundary has a cost of pause insertion, and appropriate pauses are inserted according to the costs. To test the validity of our method, we implemented it in a text-to-speech conversion system, and compared the proposed method with a previous pause insertion method which used simple analyses such as morphological analysis or analysis of adjoining phrases. The results confirmed that our proposed method fulfilled our expectations.