A Sentence Analysis Method for a Japanese Book Reading Machine for the Blind

A SENTENCE ANALYSIS METHOD FOR A JAPANESE BOOK READING MACHINE FOR THE BLIND Yutaka Ohyama, Toshikazu Fukushima, Tomoki Shutoh and Masamichi Shutoh C&C Systems Research Laboratories NEC Corporation 1-1, Miyazaki 4-chome, Miyamae-ku, Kawasaki-city, Kanagawa 213, Japan ABSTRACT The following proposal is for a Japanese sentence analysis method to be used in a Japanese book reading machine. This method is designed to allow for several candidates in case of ambiguous characters. Each sentence is analyzed to compose a data structure by defining the relationship between words and phrases. This structure ( named network structure ) involves all possible combinations of syntactically collect phrases. After network structure has been completed, heuristic rules are applied in order to determine the most probable way to arrange the phrases and thus organize the best sentence. All information about each sentence ~ the pronunciation of each word with its accent and the structure of phrases ~ will be used during speech synthesis. Experiment results reveal: 99.1% of all characters were given their correct pronunciation. Using several recognized character candidates is more efficient than only using first ranked characters as the input for sentence analysis. Also this facility increases the efficiency of the book reading machine in that it enables the user to select other ways to organize sentences. I. Introduction English text-to-speech conversion technology has substantially progressed through massive research ( e.g., Allen 1973, 1976, 1986; Klatt 1982, 1986 ). A book reading machine for the blind is a typical use for text-to- speech technology in the welfare field ( Allen 1973 ). According to the Kurzweil Reading Machine Update ( 1985 ), the Machine is in use by thousands of people in over 500 locations worldwide. In the case of Japanese, however, due to the complexities of the language, Japanese text-to-speech conversion technology hasn't progressed as fast as that of English. Recently a Japanese text-to-speech synthesizer has been introduced ( Kabeya et al. 1985 ). However, this synthesizer accepts only Japanese character code strings and doesn't include the character recognition facility. Since 1982, the authors have been engaged in the research and development of a Japanese sentence analysis method to be used in a book reading machine for the blind. The first version of the Japanese book reading machine, which is aimed to exarnine algorithms and its performance, has developed in 1984 ( Tsuji and Asai 1985; Tsukurno and Asai 1985; Fukushima et al. 1985; Mitome and Fushikida 1985, 1986 ). Figure 1 shows the book reading process of the machine. A pocket-size book is first scanned, then each character on the page is detected and recognized. Sentence analysis ( parsing ) is accomplished by using character recognition result. Finally, synthesized speech is generated. The speech can be recorded for future use. The pages will turn automatically. a p?ket-size ,',', ! ~ ~ book Automatic Paging Image Scanning Character Recognition Sentence Parsing Speech Synthesis Speech Recording I Figure I. The Book Reading Machine Outline. 165 The Japanese sentence analysis method that the authors have developed …

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