Development of a BOSS unit selection module for tone languages

The Bonn Open Synthesis System (BOSS) is a toolkit for the efficient development of speech synthesis applications. To facilitate adaptation to tone languages, we added support for tone contour quantization and prediction. Now it is possible to integrate syllable and word tone templates into the system and predict as well as select them efficiently. The simple model presented here is trained automatically and works independently of the morphophonemic rules specific to a certain tone language. Its feasibility is exemplified for the African language Ibibio.