Prosody by Rule in Swedish with Language Universal Implications

The FK text-to-speech prosody rules for Swedish are outlined. They cover all levels including prosodic grouping from syntactical analysis. It is a superposition system with local accentuations superimposed on modular F0 patterns of specific rise and decay patterns in successive prosodic groups. F0 in semitones and segmental durations are calculated as a function of lexically determined prominence and position. Speaker normalisation in frequency and time allow the pooling of male and female data in the analysis stage. The main architecture has been successfully tested in French and English synthesis.