4. A method for generating synthetic speech, comprising; detecting natural timing boundaries in words to be spoken by a synthetic speech system, to produce natural timing intervals; identifying phonemes in said natural timing intervals; assigning first time durations for each of said phonemes; changing a selected first time duration of a selected phoneme to achieve a desired time duration for a selected natural timing interval containing said selected phoneme; and setting a plurality of said natural timing intervals to substantially the same second time duration, a particular phoneme having a computed time duration in response to number of phonemes within said selected natural timing interval and said second time durations; wherein at least said selected first time duration is based upon a predetermined parameter indicative of degree to which said selected first time duration may be adjusted without undesirably degrading speech produced by said system.
4. A method for generating synthetic speech, comprising; detecting natural timing boundaries in words to be spoken by a synthetic speech system, to produce natural timing intervals; identifying phonemes in said natural timing intervals; assigning first time durations for each of said phonemes; changing a selected first time duration of a selected phoneme to achieve a desired time duration for a selected natural timing interval containing said selected phoneme; and setting a plurality of said natural timing intervals to substantially the same second time duration, a particular phoneme having a computed time duration in response to number of phonemes within said selected natural timing interval and said second time durations; wherein at least said selected first time duration is based upon a predetermined parameter indicative of degree to which said selected first time duration may be adjusted without undesirably degrading speech produced by said system. 6. The method of claim 4 further comprising: selecting each natural timing interval to be a respective interval between two respective stressed phonemes.