Paul Taylor
Chatr Overview And Synthesizing English Intonation
Abstract:The first part of the report discusses the Chatr speech synthesis system
and the design methodology behind it.
The remainder of the report gives details of the intonational module
in Chatr which is based on the new Event/Tilt model of English Intonation. It is shown how Rise/Fall/Connection (RFC) descriptions of
Intonation can be re-phrased and described by a theory of intonational
events. Next, the dimensionality of the event description is changed
from the low-level RFC space to the higher level, more meaningful
"tilt" level. The descriptions are further transformed by describing a
set of features and labelling the events in terms of those features.
These concepts are discussed thoroughly and performance figures are
given at every stage showing the accuracy of each mapping. The report
concludes with a description of the synthesis algorithm itself and
documentation of the relevant Chatr functions.