CMU punctuation normalisation

[Lars H]

What is the point in normalising question and exclamation marks to points in the arctic script? If we do not want the reader to use punctuation-dependent intonation, wouldn’t it be better not to include these phrases at all? As a speaker, it is difficult not to use question intonation for questions, even if there is a period instead of a question mark.

[Simon]

I agree that this is a somewhat strange design decision in the ARCTIC corpora. In the tech report, the authors’ don’t justify this decision, but I assume it is because questions are too sparse to attempt coverage of them, and because the features used in their text selection algorithm don’t capture the differences between statements and questions.

Your suggestion to remove sentences that are questions from the corpus entirely, rather than keep them without a question mark, seems sensible to me.

[Joseph M]

Having struggled with this myself in the studio, I don’t see how removing the punctuation would make any difference. A sentence that seems to be worded like a question is difficult to speak without question-like prosody, whether or not there is a period at the end of the text. Why do you say this would be an improvement?

[Simon]

I’ve clarified my response: removing the question sentences entirely seems to be preferable to keeping them but removing their question marks.

[Author]

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