This paper gives a novel analysis of identificational sentences such as This is Mary, That is a beautiful woman, or This looks like Mary based on the notion of a trope. On that analysis, bare demonstratives in the subject position of an identificational sentence involve reference to a trope as the direct object of perception and the sentence itself states the identification of the bearer of the...

This paper describes the first participation of MARY TTS HMM-based voices in a Blizzard challenge. An architecture for synthesis of expressive speech based on the MARY TTS system and sentiment analysis of text is proposed. The creation of several HMM-based voices in different styles using audiobook data is described. Preliminary results on perception of different voice styles and the appropriat...