MAS.632 Conversational Computer Systems - MIT OpenCourseWare

90 VOICE COMMUNICATION WITH COMPUTERS
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Figure 5.5. Pitch track of "She went to Paris."
Figure 5.6. Pitch track of "She went to Paris?"
Figure 5.7. Pitch track of "Who went to Paris?"
harder to predict for longer sentences that are syntactically more complex; each
phrase contributes its own intonation. Questions may be embedded in statements,
and we cannot determine from orthography alone whether "She went to
Paris?"is asking about the traveler (Who went to Paris?), the destination (Paris
or Rome?), or verb tense (Has she gone there already?). In short, intonation is
difficult.
Canff"u.. for Synthesis
The factors just considered, namely lexical stress, coarticulation, and intonation
reveal the limitations of the simplistic model of text-to-phoneme interpretation
described earlier. To determine lexical stress, one must examine the underlying