A sentence analysis method for a Japanese book reading machine for the blind

Abstract

The following proposal is for a Japanese sentence analysis method to be used in a Japanese book reading machine. This method is designed to allow for several candidates in case of ambiguous characters. Each sentence is analyzed to compose a data structure by defining the relationship between words and phrases. This structure ( named network structure ) involves all possible combinations of syntactically collect phrases. After network structure has been completed, heuristic rules are applied in order to determine the most probable way to arrange the phrases and thus organize the best sentence. All information about each sentence - the pronunciation of each word with its accent and the structure of phrases - will be used during speech synthesis. Experiment results reveal: 99.1% of all characters were given their correct pronunciation. Using several recognized character candidates is more efficient than only using first ranked characters as the input for sentence analysis. Also this facility increases the efficiency of the book reading machine in that it enables the user to select other ways to organize sentences.