Masanori MIYATAKE, Yoshinori SAGISAKA
Prosodic Characteristics and Their Control
in Japanese Speech with Various Speaking Styles
Abstract:Isolated word utterances of Japanese were analyzed to clarify the effects of speaking styles on prosodic parameters. These words were uttered in seven different ways, i.e., normal, slow, fast, strong, weak, high and low by two professional narrators, and their prosodic parameters (fundamental frequency (F0), power and segmental duration) were compared.
The analysis shows a strong correlation between F0 and power, and a difference in F0 patterns between speaking styles. Moreover, it was found that the F0 pattern shows remarkable differences
according to speaking styles and that the F0 pattern changes very systematically. To realize these tendencies in speech synthesis by rule, F0
control parameter estimation was carried out by applying analysis-by-synthesis technique to all samples at a time. Through this estimation, it was
confirmed that F0 pattern can be systematically controlled.