Phonetics and Phonology of Speaking Styles: Reduction and Elaboration in Speech Communication Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain September 30 - October 2, 1991

Modelling Voice Variations in Female Speech Synthesis

Inger Karlsson

Department of Speech Communication and Music Acoustics, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden

The voice source is an important factor in the production of different voice qualities. These different voice qualities art used in speech to convey among other things different suprasegmental aspects, for example emphasis, phrase boundaries and also different speaking styles, for example an authoritative or a sub-missive voice. Voice source variations are also an important means of conveying extralinguistic information of various kinds in ordinary speech. In the present study voice source variations in normal speech by female speakers have been investigated using inverse filtering. The results of the inverse filtering are given in voice source parameters appropriate for controlling speech synthesis. Accordingly, the resulting descriptions have been utilized to produce voice variations in our new synthesis system.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Karlsson, Inger (1991): "Modelling voice variations in female speech synthesis", In PPoSpSt-1991, paper 033.