Research on Synthesis Method for Spoken Sentences from Knowledge Representation

本计画以建构一个能将机器可读的知识表示转换成连续语音的语音输出系统为目标，包含概念表示、语言表示、音素与韵律符号、语音波形的产生，以及整个系统的建构。该项目已基本完成，并取得了以下成果.实现了一个从知识库中为用户选择所需信息的问答系统.将对话控制过程引入到系统中被证明是有效的，用于精确地为用户提取必要的信息，用于实现系统与用户之间的更平滑的界面，用于生成椭圆/代词表示，以及用于控制焦点条件.提出了一种从知识表示抽取中构造基本为事例结构的深层语义表示的方法， ...更多信息 D、按照上述程序。并在计算机上实现了一个从语义表达生成表层句子的程序.本文提出了一种用句子边界、连接小句边界、小句边界和具有递归左分支结构的直接成分（ICRLB）边界来表示句法结构，用韵律词重要性的三级指标来表示语篇结构的方法，并在计算机上实现。该方法进一步根据韵律词的句法和语篇信息、语法属性和重音类型生成音素和韵律符号.本文介绍了一种新型的终端模拟语音合成器，它由四个独立的级联通道组成，分别模拟四种不同语音类别和三种激励源的声音传递函数，声门波形、摩擦音和爆破音.基于自然语音的分析结果，为所有可能的日语音节构造了用于上述语音合成器的音节模板。并编制了一个程序，将存储的音节模板连接起来，产生连续语音特征参数的时间模式.综合以上结果，设计了一个完整的语音输出系统，并通过合成语音的听音测试验证了其有效性。少

With the aim of constructing a speech output system which converts machine readable knowledge representation into continuous speech, this projects includes the studies on the generation of concept representation, linguistic representation, phone and prosodic symbols, speech waveform, and the construction of the total system. The project was almost fully performed and following results were obtained.1. The study was performed to realize a question answer system which selects necessary information for the users from the knowledge base.2. The introduction of the dialogue control process to the system was shown to be effective for precisely extracting necessary information for the users, for realizing smoother interface between the system and the user, for generating elliptical/pronominal representation, and for controlling focal condition.3. A method was developed to construct deep level semantic representation, which is basically case structure, from the knowledge representation extracte … More d by the above procedure. A program was also constructed and realized on the computer which generates surface level sentences from this semantic representation.4. A method was developed and realized on the computer which represents syntactic structure using terms of sentence boundary, concatenated clause boundary, clause boundary, and ICRLB (immediate constituent with recursively left-branching structure) boundary, and discourse structure using three-level indices of importance of the prosodic words. This method further generates phone and prosodic symbols from the syntactic and discourse information, and grammatical property and accent type of the prosodic word.5. A new type of terminal analog speech synthesizer was developed and constructed on the computer which consists of four separate cascade paths simulating the vocal transfer functions of the four different speech categories and three types of excitation sources, viz., glottal waveform, fricative noise and plosive noise.6. Syllable templates for above mentioned speech synthesizer were constructed for all possible Japanese syllables based on the results of analysis of natural speech. A program was also constructed which concatenates stored syllable templates and produces temporal pattern of feature parameters of continuous speech.7. The above results were summarized to produce a total speech output system and its validity was proved by the listening test of synthesized speech. Less