Pauses and respiratory markers of the structure of book reading

The automatic reading of books by text-to-speech synthesizers requires not only the adequate encoding of the many levels of information and discourse structures in the acoustic signals but also the proper patterns of breathing, so that to pace information and organize discourse at an ecological rhythm. We analyze here the locations and durations of near 4,000 pauses produced by voice donor who has read several audiobooks, freely available on the web. Since the voice was recorded by a close microphone, we also characterized the acoustic markers of inhalation and show that the delay between end of phonation and air intake can be considered as an additional marker of thematic continuity between the two adjacent speech chunks that complements well-documented prosodic cues such as the preboundary tone and lengthening or the pause duration.

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