The Japanese CV-Syllable positioning rule for speech synthesis

In the inspection of the time intervals between two adjacent estimated Auditory Perceptual Timing Points (APTP), the time intervals were found to be dependent on the succeeding CV-syllable in continuously uttered sentences. In order to precisely investigate this dependency, the time intervals corresponding to the specified succeeding CV-syllables were measured by means of listening tests and the t-test was carried out. Furthermore, the effects of exceptional sounds were taken into consideration. Then a new rule for controlling the rhythm of synthetic speech by positioning each CV-syllable at an adequate time position was developed. The speech synthesized according to the positioning rule were evaluated and the result showed that 70% to 80% of listeners recognized its superiority.