Title :
A model-based tone labeling method for Min-Nan/Taiwanese speech
Author :
Kuo, Wei-Chih ; Wang, Yih-Ru ; Chen, Sin-Horng
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Commun. Eng., Nat. Chiao Tung Univ., Hsinchu, Taiwan
Abstract :
A model-based tone labeling method for Min-Nan/Taiwanese speech is proposed. It takes the mean and shape of syllable pitch contours as two modeling units and considers some major affecting factors that control their variations. By using the EM algorithm to estimate all parameters of the pitch mean and shape models from a speech database, we can decide the best tone sequences pronounced in all utterances of the database. Experimental results show that it outperforms the VQ classification method which suffers from the interference resulting from neighboring syllables and from the global prosodic phrase patterns.
Keywords :
natural languages; optimisation; parameter estimation; speech processing; EM algorithm; Min-Nan/Taiwanese speech; VQ classification; automatic speech recognition; global prosodic phrase patterns; parameter estimation; pitch mean; pitch shape; speech database; syllable pitch contours; text-to-speech; tone labeling method; tone sequences; Automatic speech recognition; Decoding; Error correction; Interference; Labeling; Natural languages; Parameter estimation; Shape control; Spatial databases; Speech synthesis;
Conference_Titel :
Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2004. Proceedings. (ICASSP '04). IEEE International Conference on
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-8484-9
DOI :
10.1109/ICASSP.2004.1326033
