Yorktalk: "synthesis-by-rule" without segments or rules

John Coleman

In this paper I discuss some computational-linguistic reasons why conventional text-to-speech systems which employ segmental representations and phonological rewrite-rules are less than satisfactory. I describe the YorkTalk system, which implements the "no-segment, no-rewrites" hypothesis to generate phonetic parameters for the Klatt formant synthesizer. The resulting synthetic speech is fluent, articulate and very human-like.

Cite as: Coleman, J. (1990) Yorktalk: "synthesis-by-rule" without segments or rules. Proc. First ESCA Workshop on Speech Synthesis (SSW 1), 13-16

@inproceedings{coleman90_ssw,
  author={John Coleman},
  title={{Yorktalk: "synthesis-by-rule" without segments or rules}},
  year=1990,
  booktitle={Proc. First ESCA Workshop on Speech Synthesis (SSW 1)},
  pages={13--16}
}