AUTOMATIC GENERATION OF SIMPLE MARKOV MODEL STUNTED BASEFORMS FOR WORDS IN A VOCABULARY

In a system that (i) defines each word in a vocabulary by a fenemic baseform of fenemic phones, (ii) defines an alphabet of composite phones each of which corresponds to at least one fenemic phone, and (iii) generates a string of fenemes in response to speech input, the method provides for converting a word baseform comprised of fenemic phones into a stunted word baseform of composite phones by (a) replacing each fenemic phone in the fenemic phone word baseform by the composite phone corresponding thereto; and (b) merging together at least one pair of adjacent composite phones by a single composite phone where the adverse effect of the merging is below a predefined threshold.