Quality evaluation of synthesized speech

Fonetische correlaten en communicatieve functies van linguïstische structuu

Automatic synthesis of natural-sounding intonation : for text-to-speech conversion in Dutch

A set of rules is proposed for the automatic synthesis of natural-sounding intonation as part of speech synthesis in Dutch from unrestricted text. Results of a formal perceptual evaluation show that the synthetic intonation is judged to be as natural as human intonation for isolated utterances; for texts, additional provisions are required to model contributions of text structure. It is suggested that the regularities expressed by the rules may apply to other languages as well