1. A prosody generation apparatus that receives phonological information and linguistic information so as to generate prosody, the prosody generation apparatus being operable to refer to (a) a representative prosodic pattern storage unit for accumulating beforehand representative prosodic patterns of portions of speech data, the portions including prosody changing points; (b) a selection rule storage unit that stores a selection rule predetermined according to attributes concerning phonology or attributes concerning linguistic information of the portions of the speech data including the prosody changing points; and (c) a transformation rule storage unit that stores a transformation rule predetermined according to attributes concerning the phonology or the linguistic information of the portions of the speech data including the prosody changing points; the prosody generation apparatus comprising a computer processing unit and a memory storing a program that are configured to implement: a prosody changing point setting unit that sets a prosody changing point according to at least any one of the received phonological information and the linguistic information; a pattern selection unit that selects a representative prosodic pattern from the representative prosodic pattern storage unit according to the selection rule, based on the received phonological information and the linguistic information; and a prosody generation unit that transforms the representative prosodic pattern selected by the pattern selection unit according to the transformation rule and interpolates the transformed prosodic pattern for a portion between the prosodic patterns corresponding to the prosody changing points, wherein assuming that a difference in pitch between adjacent moras or adjacent syllables of the speech data is ΔP, the prosody changing point is a point where the ΔP and an immediately following ΔP are different in sign.
1. A prosody generation apparatus that receives phonological information and linguistic information so as to generate prosody, the prosody generation apparatus being operable to refer to (a) a representative prosodic pattern storage unit for accumulating beforehand representative prosodic patterns of portions of speech data, the portions including prosody changing points; (b) a selection rule storage unit that stores a selection rule predetermined according to attributes concerning phonology or attributes concerning linguistic information of the portions of the speech data including the prosody changing points; and (c) a transformation rule storage unit that stores a transformation rule predetermined according to attributes concerning the phonology or the linguistic information of the portions of the speech data including the prosody changing points; the prosody generation apparatus comprising a computer processing unit and a memory storing a program that are configured to implement: a prosody changing point setting unit that sets a prosody changing point according to at least any one of the received phonological information and the linguistic information; a pattern selection unit that selects a representative prosodic pattern from the representative prosodic pattern storage unit according to the selection rule, based on the received phonological information and the linguistic information; and a prosody generation unit that transforms the representative prosodic pattern selected by the pattern selection unit according to the transformation rule and interpolates the transformed prosodic pattern for a portion between the prosodic patterns corresponding to the prosody changing points, wherein assuming that a difference in pitch between adjacent moras or adjacent syllables of the speech data is ΔP, the prosody changing point is a point where the ΔP and an immediately following ΔP are different in sign. 11. The prosody generation apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the transformation is a parallel shifting along a frequency axis of a pitch pattern.