Speech synthesis models: a review

Models of speech production and how these are used in text-to-speech conversion are reviewed. A foundation is laid for an explanation of present day speech synthesisers, and their limitations, through a phonetic description of speech production. Then a theoretical model of speech production which is the basis of most synthesisers is presented. Next, a number of speech synthesisers are surveyed and their relative merits and shortcomings are considered. The author ends with a brief look at techniques that are being used in place of the more traditional models of speech production in text-to-speech (TTS) systems and considers possible areas of progress in the future