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Cambridge Studies
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in Speech Science
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and Communication
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This book describes the most comprehensive system yet developed for the
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automatic conversion of unrestricted English text to intelligibie and natural
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sounding synthetic speech. It offers detailed accounts of the various
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components any speech technologist needs to consider — text preprocessing,
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morphological analysis, letter-to-sound rules, syntactic analysis, routines for
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morphophonemics, stress adjustment, timing and pitch, together with
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segmental synthesis.
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Work on the MIT text-to-speech system began in the 1960s. By the late 1970s
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experience with the interaction of all the constituent algorithms had reached
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the point where it was possible to provide a detailed exposition of the system.
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The present volume builds on an intensive lecture course on the system held
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in 1979 and brings it up to date with a full account of the developments that
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have since taken place. In particular the system'’s software has been developed
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and can now, for example, easily permit the assembly of subsets of the overall
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system. All the examples in From text to speech are a direct result of the
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current working system, and the book includes extensive and explicit
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representations of the algorithms and rules used in the system.
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The MIT text-to-speech system has set new standards for intelligibility,
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linguistic sophistication and methods of evaluation. It provides an impressive
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statement of our knowledge to date about speech synthesis techniques and
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will be an invaluable resource not only for professionals in the field, but for any
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reader with an informed interest in natural language processing.
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Cover design by James Butler
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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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GO 0187
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