ISCA Archive ECST 1987
ISCA Archive ECST 1987

Modelling rhythmic and syntactic effects on accent in long noun phrases

D. Robert Ladd, Alex Monaghan

Rhythmic adjustments and structural effects on accentuation in complex noun phrases are potentially a source of difficulty for a left-to-right phonological approach to synthetic intonation. Rhythmic adjustments can be handled by creating accentual alternations; durational aspects of rhythm are treated without recourse to an overall rhythmic structure, by assigning different durations to different syllable types defined by the rules. Structural effects, though more of a problem, can be incorporated into the existing model as more sophisticated real-time grammatical and pragmatic analyses become possible.