Rule-based prosody prediction for german text-to-speech synthesis

Abstract

This paper presents two empirical studies that examine the influence of different linguistic aspects on prosody in German. First, we analysed a German corpus with respect to the effect of syntax and information status on prosody. Second, we conducted a listening test which investigated the prosodic realisation of constituents in the German 'Vorfeld' depending on their information status. The results were used to improve the prosody prediction in the German text-to-speech synthesis system MARY.