ISCA Archive ICSLP 1996
ISCA Archive ICSLP 1996

Generating F0 contours from toBI labels using linear regression

Alan W. Black, Andrew J. Hunt

This paper describes a method for generating F0 contours from ToBI labelled utterances. The method uses linear regression to predict F0 target values for the start, mid-vowel and end of every syllable, using features representing the ToBI labels, stress and syllable position. Contours generated by this method for an English database have a correlation of 0.62 and 34.8 Hz RMS error when compared with originals from test data. These results are significant improvements on a previous rule driven method (0.40 and 44.7), and the new method contours are preferred by human listeners. The technique has also been successfully applied to Japanese ToBI with similar improvements.