Análise e modelamento da duração em português europeu

Mestrado em Estudos PortuguesesNesta dissertação procede-se a uma caracterização da duração silábica para o Português Europeu (PE). Numa primeira parte, desenvolve-se uma fundamentação teórica do nosso objecto de estudo, bem como uma descrição dos trabalhos de investigação que comprovam a proficuidade e necessidade do tratamento deste assunto para o PE. Já na segunda parte, descreve-se a recolha e análise dos dados. Os factores que influenciam a duração de cada tipo silábico são apresentados e analisados de acordo com o seu grau de intervenção. Na terceira parte, experimenta-se a implementação de um modelo de duração para cada tipo de sílaba, utilizando-o como instrumento de análise dos factores que influenciam a variação da duração. Por fim, são apresentados os resultados do presente trabalho e discutidas propostas para o futuro.The aim of this dissertation is to propose an approach to the characterization of the syllable duration in the European Portuguese (PE). Firstly, a theoretical basis concerning our objective is developed, as well as a description of other researches on this issue proving the usefulness and absolute necessity of a similar work applied to PE. Secondly, the data analysis is described. The factors that influence the duration of each syllable type are presented and analysed in accordance with its degree of intervention. Thirdly, we make an effort to implement a timing model for each syllable type, using it as an instrument of analysis of the factors that influence the timing variation. Finally, the results of the present work are presented and future proposals are argued

A Novel Syllable Duration Modeling

In this paper, a novel syllable duration modeling approach for Mandarin speech is proposed. It explicitly takes several main affecting factors as multiplicative companding parameters and estimates all model parameters by an EM algorithm. Experimental results showed that the variance of the observed syllable duration was greatly reduced from 183.4 frame (1 frame = 5 ms) to 18.5 frame by eliminating effects from these affecting factors. Besides, the estimated companding values of these affecting factors agreed well to our prior linguistic knowledge. A preliminary study of applying the proposed model to predict syllable duration for TTS is also performed. Experimental results showed that it outperformed the conventional regressive prediction method. Lastly, an extension of the approach to incorporate initial and final duration modeling is presented. This leads to a better understanding of the relation between the companding factors of initial and final duration models and those of syllable duration model