Develop a HMM-based Taiwanese text-to-speech system

In Taiwan, speech technology development has been focused on Mandarin system; there is lack of related researches of domestic Taiwanese speech. This study is aimed to develop a HMM-based Taiwanese speech synthesis system, and the established sub-syllables units' database is used to be the synthesis units for all of the possible Taiwanese semantic syllables. The multiple accent corpus-based databases were developed by all combination of basic phonemes of vowels, consonants and 8-tones in Modern Literal Taiwanese (MLT) in this study. Based on the phoneme tables, this research provide fundamental database for speech analysis and synthesis in Taiwanese spelling systems. The principles and procedures in constructing phonetically balanced sentences are constituted by Taiwanese grammatical in syntax and semantics, and employ all the possible Taiwanese. Pattern recognition was applied to extract features' parameter codes including formants, pitch, amplitudes, and duration. The collected text corpus consists of MLT sentences and syllables from MLT books. A Taiwanese balanced sentences speech database including MLT sentences is established through training and analyzing system developed by windows programming, and another rare phoneme units are generated to be included in the database. The phonetic set of Taiwanese tonal phonemes is generated from the HTK recognition results. Through this research, the established TTS system may contribute to the education and training of native Taiwanese for the children, elder, and speech disabled.