Emphasis controlled speech synthesizer

Disclosed is a system for synthesizing emphasis-controlled speech from stored signals representative of words precoded by a phase vocoder having analysis bands which are wide relative to the voice harmonic frequency spacings. The stored signals comprise short-time Fourier transform parameters which describe the magnitude and the phase derivative of the short-time speech spectrum. Speech emphasis-controlled synthesis is achieved by extracting the stored signals of chosen words under control of a pitch-duration signal, by concatenating the extracted signals, by modifying the magnitude parameters of the extracted signals to effect a desired speech intensity, by interpolating the extracted parameters, and by decoding the resultant signals in accordance with phase vocoder techniques.