Focus Perception and Prominence

Maria Wolters, Petra Wagner

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Introduction In Text-to-Speech synthesis, the input is plain text, which may then be analysed syntactically and morphologically before converting it to speech. In Concept--to--Speech synthesis (CTS), on the contrary, the input text is annotated with semantic and pragmatic information. The system then has to provide acoustic cues to semantic and pragmatic information in the synthesised speech signal. To determine direct acoustic correlates of linguistic concepts on the phonetic and prosodic level is very difficult. Ideally, those cues would be specified at a more abstract level of processing, since it is very difficult to determine direct acoustic correlates of linguistic concepts. Portele and Heuft [12] claim that prominence "a quantitative parameter of a syllable or a boundary that describes markedness relative to surrounding syllables and boundaries, respectively" which can take values between 0 and 31 for syllables[5],might provide such an interface between
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of Konvens 1998
PublisherPeter Lang Publishing
Volume1
Publication statusPublished - 1998

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • focus perception
  • linguistic concept
  • pragmatic information
  • direct acoustic correlate
  • plain text
  • prosodic level
  • text-to-speech synthesis
  • speech synthesis
  • input text
  • quantitative parameter
  • synthesised speech signal
  • acoustic cue
  • abstract level

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