Integrating phrasing and intonation modelling using syntactic and morphosyntactic information

Francisco Campillo Di'Az , Jan van Santen , Eduardo Rodri'Guez Banga

This paper focuses on the relationship between intonation and syntactic and morphosyntactic information. Although intonation and syntax are both related to dependencies between the different parts of a sentence, and are therefore related to meaning, the precise influence of grammar on intonation is not clear. We describe a novel method that uses syntactic and part-of-speech features in the framework of corpus-based intonation modelling, and which integrates part of the phrasing algorithm in the unit selection stage. Subjective tests confirm an improvement in the quality of the resulting synthetic intonation: 75% of the sentences synthesised with the new intonation model were considered to be better or much better than the sentences synthesised using the old model, while only 7.5% of sentences were rated as worse or much worse.

Mots clés: Intonation modelling; Unit selection; Corpus based; Syntax; POS; Phrasing

Francisco Campillo Di'Az, Jan van Santen, Eduardo Rodri'Guez Banga. Integrating phrasing and intonation modelling using syntactic and morphosyntactic information. Speech Communication, 2009, 51 (5), pp.452. ⟨10.1016/j.specom.2009.01.007⟩. ⟨hal-00516743⟩