SPEECH SYNTHESIZING METHOD AND APPARATUS USING PROSODY CONTROL

A speech synthesizing apparatus extracts small speech segments from a speech waveform as a prosody control target and adds inhibition information for inhibiting a predetermined prosody change process to a selected small speech segment in executing prosody control. Prosody control is performed by performing a predetermined prosody change process by using small speech segments of the extracted small speech segments other than small speech segments to which inhibition information is added. This makes it possible to prevent a deterioration in synthesized speech due to waveform editing operation.