US Patent 7809572 Voice quality change portion locating apparatus

A text edit apparatus which presents, based on language analysis information regarding a text, a portion of the text where voice quality may change when the text is read aloud has advantages of predicting likelihood of the voice quality change and judging whether or not the voice quality change will occur. The apparatus includes: a voice quality change estimation unit (103) which estimates the likelihood of the voice quality change which occurs when the text is read aloud, for each predetermined unit which is an input symbol sequence of the text including at least one phonologic sequence, based on language analysis information which is a symbol sequence of a result of language analysis including a phonologic sequence corresponding to the text; a voice quality change portion judgment unit (105) which locates a portion of the text where the voice quality change is likely to occur, based on the language analysis information and a result of the estimation performed by the voice quality change estimation unit (103); and a display unit (108) which presents the user the portion which is located by the voice quality change portion judgment unit (105) as where the voice quality change is likely to occur.