15. A computer readable medium containing executable instructions which, when executed in a processing system, causes the system to perform a method for synthesizing speech comprising: receiving text into a processor; processing the text using a phoneme duration model, the phoneme duration model produced by developing a non-exponential functional transformation form for use with a generalized additive model, wherein the non-exponential functional transformation form comprises a root sinusoidal transformation expressed by ##EQU6## where x comprises one or more of a plurality of contextual factors influencing the duration of a phoneme, A is the minimum phoneme duration observed in training data, B is the maximum phoneme duration observed in training data, .alpha. controls the amount of shrinking and expansion on either side of a main inflection point, and .beta. controls the position of the main inflection point; and generating speech signals representative of the received text.
15. A computer readable medium containing executable instructions which, when executed in a processing system, causes the system to perform a method for synthesizing speech comprising: receiving text into a processor; processing the text using a phoneme duration model, the phoneme duration model produced by developing a non-exponential functional transformation form for use with a generalized additive model, wherein the non-exponential functional transformation form comprises a root sinusoidal transformation expressed by ##EQU6## where x comprises one or more of a plurality of contextual factors influencing the duration of a phoneme, A is the minimum phoneme duration observed in training data, B is the maximum phoneme duration observed in training data, .alpha. controls the amount of shrinking and expansion on either side of a main inflection point, and .beta. controls the position of the main inflection point; and generating speech signals representative of the received text. 16. The computer readable medium of claim 15, wherein the system is further caused to perform processing the text using a phoneme pitch model.