Synthesis by rule of voice fundamental frequency contours of spoken Japanese from linguistic information

A number of utterance samples of complex sentences of Japanese were analyzed using the model for the process of fundamental frequency contour generation, with special emphasis on the relationship between a fundamental frequency contour and its underlying lexical, syntax and semantic information. Phrase commands of the model were found to be roughly classified into three groups according to the level of corresponding node of the syntactic tree of a sentence, while accent commands were found to be roughly classified into two groups according to the type of accentuation. A set of rules was constructed for generating fundamental frequency contours of complex sentences of Japanese from linguistic information. Perceptual tests of naturalness of intonation using synthetic speech with rule-generated fundamental frequency contours indicated the validity of the rules.