PROSODIC DATABASES HOLDING FUNDAMENTAL FREQUENCY TEMPLATES FOR USE IN SPEECH SYNTHESIS

Prosodic databases hold fundamental frequency templates for use in a speech synthesis system. Prosodic database templates may hold fundamental frequency values for syllables in a given sentence. These fundamental frequency values may be applied in synthesizing a sentence of speech. The templates are indexed by tonal pattern markings. A predicted tonal marking pattern is generated for each sentence of text that is to be synthesized, and this predicted pattern of tonal markings is used to locate a best-matching template. The templates are derived by calculating fundamental frequencies on a pursuable basis for sentences that are spoken by a human trainer for a given unlabeled corpus.