Expressive Speech Synthesis for Speech-Generating Devices

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant The ability to express emotion through speech is an essential element of human communication yet individuals with speech impairments who rely on speech generating devices to communicate are often deprived of this ability Current speech generating devices offer at most a limited number of expressive speech modes e g a andquot happyandquot voice or a andquot sadandquot voice and even when those are provided they are often not perceived by listeners in the intended way The proposed project aims to remedy this unfortunate situation by enhancing the rule based Synfonica text to speech system with the ability to accurately convey a broad range of emotional states The approach to be tested centers on a set of expressive speech meta parameters that collectively describe the andquot higher levelandquot characteristics of the speech output required for conveying the intended emotion for a given utterance Examples of such meta parameters include speaking rate pitch range and degree of breathiness The text to speech rules will implement the complex mapping from meta parameter values to the relevant andquot lower levelandquot acoustic parameter values used by a synthesizer to produce the final speech waveform Examples of such acoustic parameters are the fundamental frequency of voicing formant frequencies and voicing amplitude The Phase I project aims to test the feasibility of this approach by enhancing the Synfonica system to convey four emotions elation sadness and two flavors of anger andquot hotandquot anger and andquot coldandquot anger on a restricted set of utterance types A set of perceptual tests will be conducted to determine the extent to which listeners recognize the intended emotions in the synthesized speech If successful the Phase I project will lay the groundwork for providing users of speech generating devices with the means to effectively convey their emotional states through speech It also will further scientific knowledge regarding the perceptual cues used by listeners in gauging a speakerandapos s emotional state PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE Currently individuals with speech impairments who rely on speech generating devices for their verbal communication are deprived of the ability to realistically express their emotions through speech The proposed project aims to address this problem by enhancing Synfonicaandapos s text to speech system with expressive speech capabilities With such an enhanced system developers of speech generating devices will be able to provide users of these devices with genuinely expressive voices