UNIVERSITY OF KEELE

Dept. of Communication
Keele, United Kingdom
 
 
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PROJECT: FORMANT SYNTHESIS (1966 - 1976)


"There were two interrelated aims of this research: to provide a
flexible speech synthesis system for speech perception experiments
and to produce a pilot text-to-speech system." (W.A.A.*) The work
progressed in the following three stages.

 
Stage 1: Parallel Formant Synthesizer Controlled by a Computer

"The first objective was achieved by interfacing an analogue,
parallel formant synthesiser similar to that described in
Holmes, Mattingly and Shearme, Language and Speech, 7, 127-143,
1964, (see SSSHP UK Joint Speech Research Unit file) to a DEC
PDP-8 minicomputer provided with a 338 Display.  At first the
control parameters were input manually via a light pen." (W.A.A.)

Parallel formant synthesizer controlled via 11 analog voltages
from a digital computer. D/A converters were loaded every 10
milliseconds with 5-bit control data. Choice of pulse or noise
source. Preliminary spectrogram tracing with a DMAC curve tracer.
Output of tracer fed to PDP-8 via punched paper tape. Later input
via curves drawn with light pen on 338 Display.

1967 Ainsworth, W.A., "A speech synthesiser controlled by a
     PDP/338", Proc. Third Decus European Seminar, 1-4, 1967.
     (paper SSSHP 10)

     Tape ?

 
Stage 2: Program For Phonetic-Spelling to Sound Conversion

"Subsequently a synthesis-by-rule system was developed which
enabled parameter values to be computed automatically from an
input sequence representing phonemes. A look-up table and linear
interpolation were employed. This system incorporated primitive
intonation control and an isochronous foot algorithm to control
the rhythm." (W.A.A.)  Control values for phonemes, results of
student tests using CV and sentence material.

1974 Ainsworth, W.A., "Performance of a speech synthesis system",
     Int. J. Man-Machine Studies, 6, 493-511, 1974. (SSSHP 12
     Paper)

1970 SSSHP 9.1 Tape: "Speech Synthesis, W.A. Ainsworth 17/8/88".
          Nursery rhymes, etc.
          (syn:  "Hickory, Dickory, Dock.  The mouse ran up ...
          Dock.  Jack and Jill ran up the hill ...  after.  I have
          a deep voice."; syn, 2 voices:  "Humpty Dumpty sat on a
          wall ...  together again."; syn:  "One, two, three, ...
          twenty.  A, B, C, ...  Zed.  Friends, Romans,
          Countrymen, lend me your ears ...  Caesar.  Good
          morning, Madam, ...  so have I.")
          7" reel, 7 1/2 ips, 0 vu background hum of 50 Hz in
          synthesis

 
Stage 3: Synthesis-By-Rule From English Text.

"Conversion from orthographic to phonemic symbols was performed
by context dependent rules and segmentation into breath groups by
a hierarchical set of rules based on punctuation and parts of
speech.  The linguistic processing modules generated a file
suitable for input to the synthesis-by-rule system ..." (W.A.A.)

1973 Ainsworth, W.A., "A system for converting English text into
     speech", IEEE Trans. Audio Electro, AU-21, 288-290 (1973).
     (K) (paper SSSHP 11)

1972 SSSHP 9.2 Tape: "Speech Synthesis, W.A. Ainsworth 17/8/88".
          The fable of The North Wind and the Sun.
          (syn:  "The North Wind and the Sun were disputing ...
          Sun was the stronger of the two.")
          7" reel, 7 1/2 ips, 0 VU background hum of 50 Hz in
          synthesis


"The quality was later improved by expanding the look-up table to
incorporate allophonic variations, determined by context, for
many of the phonemes". (W.A.A.)  Confusion matrices for CVs.


1976 Ainsworth, W.A. and J.B. Millar, "Allophonic variation of
     stop consonants in a speech synthesis-by-rule program", Int.
     J. Man-Machine Studies, 8, 159-168, 1976. (paper SSSHP 13)


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BIOGRAPHIES


WILLIAM A. AINSWORTH

1960 B.Sc. in physics, Univ. of London, London, England
1963 Ph.D. in communication, Univ. of Keele, Keele, England
1963/64 Visiting Research Associate, Electrical Engineering
     Dept., Univ. of Illinois, Urbana
1964 Dept. of Communication, Univ. of Keele


JOHN BRUCE MILLAR

1964 B.Sc. in physics, Univ. of Liverpool, U.K.,
     Research Student, Dept. of Comm., Univ. of Keele, U.K.
1968 Ph.D, Dept. of Comm., Univ. of Keele, U.K., Thesis: Three
     related techniques for the statistical analysis of clipped,
     Research Fellow.
1970 Research Scientist, Div. of Computing Research, C.S.I.R.O.,
     Canberra, Australia
1973 Research Assoc., Dept. of Comm., Univ. of Keele, U.K. (3
     months), Australian National University, Canberra
1980 Visiting Research Assoc., Phonetics Dept., Univ. College,
     London (6 months), Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CN, USA
     (1 month)
1988 Fellow, Computer Sciences Laboratory, Research School of
     Physical Sciences, Australian National Univ. (see curriculum
     vitae, SSSHP UK Univ. of Keele file)


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CONTRIBUTIONS AND REVIEW BY:

Dr. William A. Ainsworth
Dept. of Comm. & Neuroscience
University of Keele
Keele, Staffordshire
ST5 5BG  United Kingdom

(* Quoted material "W.A.A." is from personal communication, 
W.A. Ainsworth to H.D. Maxey, August 1988. See SSSHP UK 
University of Keele file.)