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A computer program for synthesizing Japanese fundamental frequency contours implements our theory of Japanese intonation. This theory provides a complete qualitative description of the known characteristics of Japanese intonation, as well as a quantitative model of tone-scaling and timing precise enough to translate straightforwardly into a computational algorithm. An important aspect of the description is that various features of the intonation pattern are designated to be phonological properties of different types of phrasal units in a hierarchical organization. This phrasal organization is known to play an important role in parsing speech. . | JAPANESE PROSODIC PHRASING AND INTONATION SYNTHESIS Mary E. Beckman1 and Janet B. Pierrehumbert Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence Research AT T Bell Laboratories 600 Mountain Ave Murray Hill NJ 07974 ABSTRACT A computer program for synthesizing Japanese fundamental frequency contours implements our theory of Japanese intonation. This theory provides a complete qualitative description of the known characteristics of Japanese intonation as well as a quantitative model of tone-scaling and timing precise enough to translate straightforwardly into a computational algorithm. An important aspect of the description is that various features of the intonation pattern are designated to be phonological properties of different types of phrasal units in a hierarchical organization. This phrasal organization is known to play an important role in parsing speech. Our research shows it also to be one reflex of intonational prominence and hence of focus and other discourse structures. The qualitative features of each phrasal level and their implementation in the synthesis program are described. 1. INTRODUCTION In this paper we will present a computer program for synthesizing fundamental frequency contours for standard Japanese. Fundamental frequency fo is the paramount physical correlate of the sensation of pitch and in many languages the time course of fo is one of the primary phonetic manifestations of intonation. This is especially true in Japanese where duration and amplitude do not have the consequential role in communicating intonational structure that they do in English Beckman 1986 . Accordingly a program for synthesizing Japanese fo contours is tantamount to a computational implementation of a theory of Japanese intonation. The theory that we have implemented in our synthesis program is based on a review of the literature in English and Japanese and on the results of an extensive series of experiments in which we examined and made fo measurements of about 2500 .
