A System for Rule Synthesis of Prosodic Features of Speech of Multiple Language Based on a Generative Model of Fundamental Frequency Contours

(1)目标的确定和目标语言的选择决定以主要研究者和他的同事已经建立的日语基本频率轮廓(以下简称F_0轮廓)的生成模型为基础，并将其推广到其他语言，关于词汇口音、句法结构和焦点位置的语言信息的提取将作为一个单独的研究项目的模型，英国英语、德语和希腊语将被选为目标语言的例子。(2)英式英语、德语和希腊语的F_0轮廓的生成模型的阐明并收集和分析了以这三种语言为母语的一些男性和女性的希腊语文本阅读和对话样本。结果表明，这些语言的F0语音轮廓的产生机制与普通日语相同，但不同语言的控制命令模式可能有所不同。英式英语和日语的不同之处在于短语命令的时序和大小，以及重音命令的极性可以是积极的也可以是消极的。德语与日语的不同之处在于它有两种类型的短语命令：冲动型和阶跃函数型。(3)多语言韵律特征规则合成系统的构建在上述研究结果的基础上，针对每种目标语言设计了韵律符号系统和控制命令的极性、大小和时序的确定规则，并以普通日语韵律特征规则合成系统为基础，构建了韵律特征规则合成系统。

(1)Definition of the goal and choice of target languages It was decided that the generative model for the fundamental frequency contours (henceforth F_0contours) of the common Japanese, already established by the principal investigator and his colleagues, shall be used as the basis and shall be extended to apply to other languages, that the extraction of linguistic information on lexical accents, syntactic structures and locations of foci is to be modeling a separate research project, and that British English, German and Greek are to be selected as examples of target languages.(2)Elucidation of the generative models for F_0 contours of British English, German, and GreekSpeech samples of text reading and dialogue by a number of native male and female speakers of the three languages were collected and analyzed. The results indicated that F_0 contours of speech of these languages can be generated using the same mechanism as for those of the common Japanese, but the patterns of control commands can be different among various languages. British English differs from Japanese in the timing and magnitude of the phrase commands as well as in the fact that the polarity of accent commands can be both positive and negative. German differs from Japanese in that it has two types of phrase commands ; the impulse type and the step function types. On the other hand, the constraints on the control commands of Greek are found to be identical to those of Japanese.(3)Construction of a system for rule synthesis of prosodic features of multiple languagesOn the basis of the above-mentioned results, a system of prosodic symbols and a set of rules for determining the polarity, magnitude and timing of control commands were devised for each target languages, and a system for rule synthesis of prosodic features was constructed, using the system for the common Japanese as its basis.