Introduction

IPOX is an all-prosodic speech synthesizer, based in part on YorkTalk (Coleman 1992, Local 1994), currently being developed by Arthur Dirksen at IPO and John Coleman at Oxford University.

All-prosodic means:

no principled distinction between segmental and supra-segmental prosodic structure
speech generated directly from prosodic structure

Properties:

declarative, no rewriting rules
analysis of input using constraint-based grammars
compositional phonetic interpretation
metrical structure (prosodic headedness) used in both analysis and phonetic interpretation
fully integrated system, including formant synthesis and speech output

Goals:

further formalize and extend the YorkTalk architecture
develop a multi-lingual version
make the YorkTalk model accessible to phonologists and speech researchers

Current capabilities (British English):

syllable overlap (used to glue syllables together)
syllable compression (used to generate the correct rhythm)
a first attempt at connected speech

These demo's were played at the Second ESCA/IEEE Workshop on Speech Synthesis (September 1994), Dirksen and Coleman 1994.

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Arthur Dirksen / adirksen@prl.philips.nl / January 1995