IDENTIFICATION OF UNIT OVERLAP REGIONS FOR CONCATENATIVE SPEECH SYNTHESIS SYSTEM

Speech signal parameters are extracted from time-series data corresponding to different sound units containing the same vowel. The extracted parameters are used to train a statistical model, such as a Hidden Markov-based Model, that has a data structure for separately modeling the nuclear trajectory region of the vowel and its surrounding transition elements. The model is trained as through embedded re-estimation to automatically determine optimally aligned models that identify the nuclear trajectory region. The boundaries of the nuclear trajectory region serve to delimit the overlap region for subsequent sound unit concatenation.