Corpus-Based Hidden Markov Modelling of the Fundamental Frequency of Lithuanian

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Vaičiūnas, Airenas^{; *} | Raškinis, Gailius | Kazlauskienė, Asta

Affiliations: Vytautas Magnus University, K. Donelaičio g. 58, LT-44248, Kaunas, Lithuania. E-mails: airenass@gmail.com, g.raskinis@if.vdu.lt, a.kazlauskiene@hmf.vdu.lt

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author.

Abstract: This paper presents the corpus-driven approach in building the computational model of fundamental frequency, or F0, for Lithuanian language. The model was obtained by training the HMM-based speech synthesis system HTS on six hours of speech coming from multiple speakers. Several gender specific models, using different parameters and different contextual factors, were investigated. The models were evaluated by synthesizing F0 contours and by comparing them to the original F0 contours using criteria of root mean square error (RMSE) and voicing classification error. The HMM-based models showed an improvement of the RMSE over the mean-based model that predicted F0 of the vowel on the basis of its average normalized pitch.

Keywords: HMM-based synthesis, statistical parametric speech synthesis, F₀ modelling, intonation modelling, text-to-speech systems, HTS, Lithuanian language

Journal: Informatica, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 673-688, 2016