Showing papers on "Naturalness published in 1994"

Measures of fine tuning

Abstract: Fine-tuning criteria are frequently used to place upper limits on the masses of superpartners in supersymmetric extensions of the standard model. However, commonly used prescriptions for quantifying naturalness have some important shortcomings. Motivated by this, we propose new criteria for quantifying fine tuning that can be used to place upper limits on superpartner masses with greater fidelity. In addition, our analysis attempts to make explicit the assumptions implicit in quantifications of naturalness. We apply our criteria to the minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model, and we find that the scale of supersymmetry breaking can be larger than previous methods indicate.

A hierarchical stochastic model for automatic prediction of prosodic boundary location

Abstract: Prosodic phrase structure provides important information for the understanding and naturalness of synthetic speech, and a good model of prosodic phrases has applications in both speech synthesis an

Psychophysical Analysis of Audiovisual Judgments of Speech Naturalness of Nonstutterers and Stutterers

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to determine through psychophysical comparison of scaling data whether speech naturalness judgments of stutterers and nonstutterers from audiovisual recordings form a prothetic or a metathetic continuum. Comparison of direct magnitude estimation and equal-appearing interval scale data indicated that speech naturalness forms a metathetic continuum when observers judge audiovisual recordings, suggesting that either scaling procedure is valid for the quantification of this dimension. Ease of use, an existing body of comparative data from different clinics, and somewhat better reliability favor the interval scaling procedure.

Study on the naturalness of synthetic speech

Abstract: In the past 10 years a text-to-speech system including a phonetic library, tonemodel and basic synthetic rules had been established in IAAS. At present the speech synthesis of unrestricted vocabulary has been attained,but the naturalness has to be improved.The effect of segmental and supra-segmental feature of speech upon naturalness of syntheticspeech had been studied. This study shows that the rhythm and coarticulation occupy a dominant position for improving the naturalness of synthetic speech. The tone model for synthesis of short sentence is suitable. But if the synthesis of larger linguistic unit than simple sentence is considered,the intonation must be controled carefully. In this article the subjectiveassessment method and the results of the study on the naturalness of synthetic Chinese willbe represented

Improving naturalness in a text-to-speech conversion system for the Basque language

Abstract: Prosody is a very important factor concerning naturalness in a text to speech conversion system. In this paper we describe the results obtained from the analysis of the Basque language. Two models of intonation have been developed to account for the two accentual systems coexisting in the Basque language speaking area. Energy contours and duration rules have also been found. >

Avoiding Mistakes in Reasoning About Naturalness: A Reply to Dalcourt

Abstract: L'A. critique les conceptions de Gerard Dalcourt concernant le naturel et l'homosexualite et plus particulierement son paralogisme zoocentriste