Analysis and modeling of word accent and sentence intonation in Swedish

In Swedish, the fundamental frequency contour (F/sub 0/ contour) is known to be the main acoustic feature for word accent and sentence intonation. The authors propose a model for the generation process of F/sub 0/ contours of Swedish, based on an extension of the model for Japanese. As the input to this model, two kinds of command are assumed: phrase commands, which are always positive impulses, and accent commands, which are stepwise functions of both polarities. Analysis-by-synthesis of F/sub 0/ contours of both isolated words and sentences, uttered by two native speakers from the Stockholm region, indicated that the model can always generate very close approximations to observed F/sub 0/ contours, and that the extracted parameters are systematically related to the underlying lexical word accent, syntactic structure, and focus. This demonstrates the basic validity of the model and its utility in speech synthesis. >