Automatic segmentation of given set of Sinhala text into syllables for Speech Synthesis

A dictionary based automatic syllabification tool has been given for Speech Synthesis in Sinhala language. This tool is also capable of providing frequency distributions of Vowels, Consonants and Syllables for a given set of Sinhala text. A method of determining syllable boundaries has also been shown. Detection of Syllable boundaries for a given Sinhala sentence is achieved by four main phases and those phases have been described with examples. Rules for the automatic segmentation of words into syllables have been derived based on a dictionary.  An algorithm has been produced for the implementation of these rules which utilizes the dictionary together with an accurate mark up of the syllable boundaries. Keywords: Speech Synthesis; Text to Speech (TTS); Phonetic; Vowels; Consonants; Syllables; algorithm; transcription. DOI: 10.4038/josuk.v3i0.2738 J. Sci. Univ. Kelaniya 3 (2007) : 53-62