Computing prosodic properties in a data-to-speech system

We propose a set of rules for the computation of prosody which are implemented in an existing generic Data-to-Speech system. The rules make crucial use of both sentence-internal and sentence-external semantic and syntactic information provided by the system. In a Text-to-Speech system, this information would have to be obtained through text analysis, but in Data-to-Speech it is readily available, and its reliable and detailed character makes it possible to compute the prosodic properties of generated sentences in a sophisticated way. This in turn allows for a close control of prosodic realization, resulting in natural-sounding intonation.

From data to speech: A generic approach

We present a data-to-speech system called D2S, which can be used for the creation of datato-speech systems in different languages and domains. The most important characteristic of a data-to-speech system is that it combines language and speech generation: language generation is used to produce a natural language text expressing the system’s input data, and speech generation is used to make this text audible. In D2S, this combination is exploited by using linguistic information available in the language generation module for the computation of prosody. This allows us to achieve a better prosodic output quality than can be achieved in a plain text-to-speech system. For language generation in D2S, the use of syntactically enriched templates is guided by knowledge of the discourse context, while for speech generation pre-recorded phrases are combined in a prosodically sophisticated manner. This combination of techniques makes it possible to create linguistically sound but efficient systems with a high quality language and speech output.

Skipping breakfast and overweight in 2-and 5-year-old Dutch children-the GECKO Drenthe cohort

Skipping breakfast is associated with higher BMI in children aged 5 years and older. However, not much is known about this association in younger children. In the Dutch GECKO Drenthe birth cohort we examined the association between breakfast skipping and objectively measured overweight at the age of 2 (n = 1488) and 5 (n = 1366) years. At 2 years, 124 (8.3%) children were overweight and 44 (3.0%) did not eat breakfast daily. At 5 years, 180 (13.2%) children were overweight and 73 (5.3%) did not eat breakfast daily. Children belonging to families of non-Dutch origin, those with lower educated parents and those with single parents skipped breakfast more often. Breakfast skipping in 2- and 5-year-olds is rare in the Netherlands. We found no association between skipping breakfast and overweight, neither at age 2 (odds ratio (OR): 1.85 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.61-5.64)) nor at age 5 (OR: 0.46 (95% CI: 0.19-1.11)). Also the type of breakfast was not related to overweight at 5 years. An explanation for this finding might be that skipping breakfast is not (yet) an issue in these children