This project supports a cooperative project by a US scientist, Dr. Kenneth Stevens, from the Research Laboratory of Electronics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA and Dr. S.S. Agrawal of the Central Electronics Engineering Research Institute (CEERI) in New Delhi, India. The two scientists plan to conduct synthesis of Hindi speech by computer, and to develop rules for synthesis and concatenation of basic Hindi phonemes to generate words and sentences. The results of these studies would be subsequently used to develop a text-to-speech synthesizer for the Hindi language. The KLSYN88, a cascade-parallel format synthesizer developed at MIT will be used as the basic tool to analyze and synthesize the sounds. Since Hindi speech posses several types of special sounds that differ from the sounds in European languages, the most important of these are the stops and affricates, special attention will be paid to the analysis and synthesis of these sounds. In addition to the two senior scientists, a post doctorate and a junior researcher from MIT will also participate in the research and will work with the Indian scientists in the New Delhi Laboratory. Scope: This project allows cooperation of two well known scientists whose capabilities complement each other to do important scientific work. The major experimental work related to analysis and synthesis of Hindi speech will be carried at CEERI, while some experiments will also be conducted at MIT. There will be frequent exchange of ideas, review of data, techniques and results through correspondence and through exchanges of visits by the P.I.'s and by the U.S. junior scientists. This project meets the objectives of the Division of International Programs in fostering international collaboration and increasing the exposure of young scientists to the international scientific scene.
