15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15) Barcelona, Spain August 3-9, 2003

Analysis and Synthesis of F₀ Contours of Thai Utterances Based on the Command-Response Model

Hiroya Fujisaki (1), Sumio Ohno (2), Sudaporn Luksaneeyanawin (3)

(1) University of Tokyo, Japan
(2) Tokyo University of Technology, Japan
(3) Chulalongkorn University, Thailand

Characteristics of F₀ contours representing the five tones of Thai vary widely due to various factors, but the variations can be quantitatively explained and predicted if we have a precise formulation of the underlying process. This paper presents such a formulation in terms of the command-response model, and shows that the model can generate very close approximations to observed F₀ contours by positing systematic patterns of positive and negative tone commands for individual tone types, except for the mid tone that has no tone command. The timing of these commands is shown to vary systematically with the speech rate. These findings are then used as constraints/rules for tone generation in speech synthesis, and the validity of such constraints is confirmed by perceptual evaluation of synthetic speech by native speakers.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Fujisaki, Hiroya / Ohno, Sumio / Luksaneeyanawin, Sudaporn (2003): "Analysis and synthesis of F₀ contours of Thai utterances based on the command-response model", In ICPhS-15, 1129-1132.