The synthesis rules in a Chinese text-to-speech system

The synthesis rules developed for a successfully implemented Chinese text-to-speech system are described in detail. The design approach is based on a syllable concatenation that is rooted in the special characteristics of the Chinese language. Special attention given to the lexical tones and other prosodic rules, such as concatenation rules, sandhi rules, stress rules, intonation patterns, syllable duration rules, pause insertion rules, and energy modification rules. The rules are derived from the acoustic properties of Mandarin Chinese and therefore are useful not only in designing other Chinese text-to-speech systems, but also in understanding the characteristics of Mandarin sentences and processing Mandarin speech signals for other purposes such as segmentation or recognition