A Flexible Architecture for Urdu Phonemes-Based Concatenative Speech Synthesis

TTS (Text-to-Speech) synthesis systems are extensively used across the world to intensify the accessibility of information and to make it possible for the handicapped to be involved directly with computers to get the benefits from this high technology revolution. Various TTS synthesis techniques hav...

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Main Authors: MUHAMMAD RIZWAN AHMAD, MUHAMMAD JUNAID ARSHAD
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Mehran University of Engineering and Technology 2016-07-01
Series:Mehran University Research Journal of Engineering and Technology
Subjects:
Online Access:http://publications.muet.edu.pk/research_papers/pdf/pdf1365.pdf
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author MUHAMMAD RIZWAN AHMAD
MUHAMMAD JUNAID ARSHAD
author_facet MUHAMMAD RIZWAN AHMAD
MUHAMMAD JUNAID ARSHAD
author_sort MUHAMMAD RIZWAN AHMAD
collection DOAJ
description TTS (Text-to-Speech) synthesis systems are extensively used across the world to intensify the accessibility of information and to make it possible for the handicapped to be involved directly with computers to get the benefits from this high technology revolution. Various TTS synthesis techniques have been used with their own advantages and limitations. There is not a concatenative synthesis strategy based architecture for Urdu TTS synthesis system for handling the homographs and to avoid the unnatural robot sounding speech produced due the use of di-phones. In this paper, we propose a flexible architecture for Urdu TTS synthesis system that uses concatenative synthesis strategy because this approach has the ability to join together the small corpus of speech to generate natural and intelligible sound. The main aspiration of this research is to disambiguate the homographs in the Urdu language and to avoid the unnatural robot sounding speech. Finally, the effectiveness of the system is tested in terms of intelligibility and acceptability on word and sentence level. The intelligibility rate is near to 80% and 65% while acceptability rate for the naturalness is 95% (75% natural, 20% acceptable).
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spelling doaj.art-a16dbfb32c2c483891736af9ce5175b62022-12-22T00:25:47ZengMehran University of Engineering and TechnologyMehran University Research Journal of Engineering and Technology0254-78212413-72192016-07-013533733801365A Flexible Architecture for Urdu Phonemes-Based Concatenative Speech SynthesisMUHAMMAD RIZWAN AHMADMUHAMMAD JUNAID ARSHADTTS (Text-to-Speech) synthesis systems are extensively used across the world to intensify the accessibility of information and to make it possible for the handicapped to be involved directly with computers to get the benefits from this high technology revolution. Various TTS synthesis techniques have been used with their own advantages and limitations. There is not a concatenative synthesis strategy based architecture for Urdu TTS synthesis system for handling the homographs and to avoid the unnatural robot sounding speech produced due the use of di-phones. In this paper, we propose a flexible architecture for Urdu TTS synthesis system that uses concatenative synthesis strategy because this approach has the ability to join together the small corpus of speech to generate natural and intelligible sound. The main aspiration of this research is to disambiguate the homographs in the Urdu language and to avoid the unnatural robot sounding speech. Finally, the effectiveness of the system is tested in terms of intelligibility and acceptability on word and sentence level. The intelligibility rate is near to 80% and 65% while acceptability rate for the naturalness is 95% (75% natural, 20% acceptable).http://publications.muet.edu.pk/research_papers/pdf/pdf1365.pdfArticulatoryText-to-SpeechFormantConcatenativeNatural Language ProcessingWaveformsSpeech UnitsPhonemesSpeech Synthesis.
spellingShingle MUHAMMAD RIZWAN AHMAD
MUHAMMAD JUNAID ARSHAD
A Flexible Architecture for Urdu Phonemes-Based Concatenative Speech Synthesis
Mehran University Research Journal of Engineering and Technology
Articulatory
Text-to-Speech
Formant
Concatenative
Natural Language Processing
Waveforms
Speech Units
Phonemes
Speech Synthesis.
title A Flexible Architecture for Urdu Phonemes-Based Concatenative Speech Synthesis
title_full A Flexible Architecture for Urdu Phonemes-Based Concatenative Speech Synthesis
title_fullStr A Flexible Architecture for Urdu Phonemes-Based Concatenative Speech Synthesis
title_full_unstemmed A Flexible Architecture for Urdu Phonemes-Based Concatenative Speech Synthesis
title_short A Flexible Architecture for Urdu Phonemes-Based Concatenative Speech Synthesis
title_sort flexible architecture for urdu phonemes based concatenative speech synthesis
topic Articulatory
Text-to-Speech
Formant
Concatenative
Natural Language Processing
Waveforms
Speech Units
Phonemes
Speech Synthesis.
url http://publications.muet.edu.pk/research_papers/pdf/pdf1365.pdf
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