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Last Syllable Unit Penalization in Unit Selection TTS

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Text, Speech, and Dialogue (TSD 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10415))

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Abstract

While unit selection speech synthesis tries to avoid speech modifications, it strongly depends on the placement of units into the correct position. Usually, the position is tightly coupled with a distance from the beginning/end of some prosodic or rhythmic units like phrases or words. The present paper shows, however, that it is not necessary to follow position requirements, when the phonetic knowledge of the perception of prosodic patterns (mostly durational in our case) is considered. In particular, we focus on the effects of using word-final units in word-internal positions in synthesized speech, which are often perceived negatively by listeners, due to disruptions in local timing.

This research was supported by the Czech Science Foundation (GA CR), project No. GA16-04420S, and by the grant of the University of West Bohemia, project No. SGS-2016-039.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. New Technologies for the Information Society (NTIS) and Department of Cybernetics, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of West Bohemia, Pilsen, Czech Republic

    Markéta Jůzová & Daniel Tihelka

  2. Faculty of Arts, Institute of Phonetics, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

    Radek Skarnitzl

Authors
  1. Markéta Jůzová
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  2. Daniel Tihelka
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  3. Radek Skarnitzl
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Correspondence to Daniel Tihelka .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of West Bohemia, Pilsen, Czech Republic

    Kamil Ekštein

  2. University of West Bohemia, Pilsen, Czech Republic

    Václav Matoušek

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Jůzová, M., Tihelka, D., Skarnitzl, R. (2017). Last Syllable Unit Penalization in Unit Selection TTS. In: Ekštein, K., Matoušek, V. (eds) Text, Speech, and Dialogue. TSD 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10415. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64206-2_36

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64206-2_36

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-64205-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-64206-2

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