Method and apparatus for predicting word prominence in speech synthesis

A method and apparatus is provided for generating speech that sounds more natural. Determining whether information in a current sentence is new or previously given is performed based on a semantic relationship between the current sentence and a number of preceding sentences. A word prominence for the synthetic speech to a word in the current sentence is assigned in accordance with the information determination. A speech representative of the current sentence can be generated. In one embodiment, word prominence and latent semantic analysis are used to generate more natural sounding speech. A method for generating speech that sounds more natural may comprise generating synthesized speech having certain word prominence characteristics and applying a semantically-driven word prominence assignment model to specify word prominence consistent with the way humans assign word prominence.