DATA-BASE RULE-SYSTEM FOR THE MULTIVOX TEXT-TO-SPEECH CONVERTER APPLICATION FOR ARABIC LANGUAGE

The MULTIVOX-Multilingual text-to-speech converter system is adapted to Modern Standard Arabic. In this system, Arabic speech is generated from the concatenation of a set of acoustic building units (ABUs). A 3-dimensional data-base rule-system for the synthesis of unlimited vocabulary Arabic text is organized to concatenate the appropri- ate ABUs for all possible phone-code pairs that may exist in the input text. The main functions of the MULTIVOX are explained. Illustrative examples are given to show the conversion of Arabic graphemes into phone-codes and the use of the data-base rule-system in the concatenation of the ABUs. Hearing tests have been carried out to test the quality of the synthesized speech

ACOUSTIC BUILDING UNITS FOR FORMANT SYNTHESIS TEXT-TO-SPEECH CONVERTER SYSTEM FOR MODERN STANDARD ARABIC

In this paper an inventory of acoustic building units (ABUs) used for the synthesis of Arabic speech is presented. The ABUs are generated for the free programmable PCF-8200 formant synthesizer chip which has been used in the development of the real time text-to-speech multilingual system, the MULTIVOX. To utilize these ABUs for the synthesis of Arabic speech a set of 36 Arabic sounds and all their possible combinations are defined. The inventory of 255 ABUs is designed that each sound combination can be built up by using some of those ABUs. A grapheme-to-phone-code converter is designed so to convert the written input text into its equivalent phone-codes. Furthermore, it contains solutions for the difficult phonetic problems in the Arabic input text

Phonetic events from the labeling the european Portuguese database for speech synthesis, FEUP/IPB-DB

In this paper a labeled new speech signal database (FEUP/IPB-DB) in Standard European Portuguese (hereafter SEP) is presented. The objective of this work is, on one hand, to provide phonetic material for Text-to-Speech (TTS) systems construction, either from the start or to improve the quality of existing ones, and, on the other hand, to place at service of the SEP scientific community a phonetically and prosodically valuable speech corpus, essential for Speech Synthesis or Phonetics research. Our purpose is to make it available for the scientific community, since there isn’t any other DB of its kind for EP. The main features of the database will be described as well as some basic statistical aspects. A discussion of some methodological problems and some observed phenomena in experimental phonetics deriving from the speech signal labeling is also done. The approach in our work is to produce a resource that can be further improved in subsequent steps with minimal re-work. The phonetic, linguistic and technical consistency are guaranteed through the involvement of a multidisciplinary team

Do grafema ao gesto : contributos linguísticos para um sistema de síntese de base articulatória

Doutoramento em LinguísticaMotivados pelo propósito central de contribuir para a construção, a longo prazo, de um sistema completo de conversão de texto para fala, baseado em síntese articulatória, desenvolvemos um modelo linguístico para o português europeu (PE), com base no sistema TADA (TAsk Dynamic Application), que visou a obtenção automática da trajectória dos articuladores a partir do texto de entrada. A concretização deste objectivo ditou o desenvolvimento de um conjunto de tarefas, nomeadamente 1) a implementação e avaliação de dois sistemas de silabificação automática e de transcrição fonética, tendo em vista a transformação do texto de entrada num formato adequado ao TADA; 2) a criação de um dicionário gestual para os sons do PE, de modo a que cada fone obtido à saída do conversor grafema-fone pudesse ter correspondência com um conjunto de gestos articulatórios adaptados para o PE; 3) a análise do fenómeno da nasalidade à luz dos princípios dinâmicos da Fonologia Articulatória (FA), com base num estudo articulatório e perceptivo. Os dois algoritmos de silabificação automática implementados e testados fizeram apelo a conhecimentos de natureza fonológica sobre a estrutura da sílaba, sendo o primeiro baseado em transdutores de estados finitos e o segundo uma implementação fiel das propostas de Mateus & d'Andrade (2000). O desempenho destes algoritmos – sobretudo do segundo – mostrou-se similar ao de outros sistemas com as mesmas potencialidades. Quanto à conversão grafema-fone, seguimos uma metodologia baseada em regras de reescrita combinada com uma técnica de aprendizagem automática. Os resultados da avaliação deste sistema motivaram a exploração posterior de outros métodos automáticos, procurando também avaliar o impacto da integração de informação silábica nos sistemas. A descrição dinâmica dos sons do PE, ancorada nos princípios teóricos e metodológicos da FA, baseou-se essencialmente na análise de dados de ressonância magnética, a partir dos quais foram realizadas todas as medições, com vista à obtenção de parâmetros articulatórios quantitativos. Foi tentada uma primeira validação das várias configurações gestuais propostas, através de um pequeno teste perceptual, que permitiu identificar os principais problemas subjacentes à proposta gestual. Este trabalho propiciou, pela primeira vez para o PE, o desenvolvimento de um primeiro sistema de conversão de texto para fala, de base articulatória. A descrição dinâmica das vogais nasais contou, quer com os dados de ressonância magnética, para caracterização dos gestos orais, quer com os dados obtidos através de articulografia electromagnética (EMA), para estudo da dinâmica do velo e da sua relação com os restantes articuladores. Para além disso, foi efectuado um teste perceptivo, usando o TADA e o SAPWindows, para avaliar a sensibilidade dos ouvintes portugueses às variações na altura do velo e alterações na coordenação intergestual. Este estudo serviu de base a uma interpretação abstracta (em termos gestuais) das vogais nasais do PE e permitiu também esclarecer aspectos cruciais relacionados com a sua produção e percepção.Motivated by the central purpose of contributing for the construction, in the long term, of a complete text-to-speech system based in articulatory synthesis, we develop a linguistic model for European Portuguese (EP), based on TADA system (TAsk Dynamic Application), that aimed at the automatic attainment of the articulators trajectory from the input text. The specification of this purpose determined the development of a set of tasks, namely the 1) implementation and evaluation of two automatic syllabification systems and two grapheme-to-phoneme (G2P) conversion systems, in view of the transformation of the input in an appropriate format to the TADA; 2) the creation of a gestural database for the EP sounds, in so that each phone obtained at the output of the g2p system could have correspondence with a set of articulatory gestures adapted for EP; 3) the dynamic analysis of nasality, on the basis of an articulatory and perceptive study. The two automatic syllabification algorithms implemented and tested make appeal to phonological knowledge on the structure of the syllable, being the first one based in finite state transducers and the second one a faithful implementation of Mateus & d'Andrade (2000) proposals. The performance of these algorithms – especially the second - was similar to the one of other systems with the same potentialities. Regarding grapheme-to-phone conversion, we follow a methodology based on manual rules combined with an automatic learning technique. The evaluation results of this system motivated the exploitation of others automatic approaches, finding also to evaluate the impact of the syllabic information integration in the systems. The gestural description of the European Portuguese sounds, anchored on the theoretical and methodological tenets of the Articulatory Phonology, was based essentially on the analysis of magnetic resonance data (MRI), from which all the measurements were carried out, aiming to obtain the quantitative articulatory parameters. The several gestural configurations proposed have been validated, through a small perceptual test, which allowed identifying the main underlying problems of the gestural proposal. This work provided, for the first time to PE, the development of a first articulatory based text-to-speech system. The dynamic description of nasal vowels relied either on the magnetic resonance data, for characterization of the oral gestures, either on the data obtained through electromagnetic articulography (EMA), for the study of the velum dynamic and of its relation with the remaining articulators. Besides that, a perceptive test was performed, using TADA and SAPWindows, to evaluate the sensibility of the Portuguese listeners to the variations in the height of velum and alterations in the intergestural coordination. This study supported an abstract interpretation (in gestural terms) of the EP nasal vowels and allowed also to clarify crucial aspects related with its production and perception