Support for explicit prosody specifications

MARY TTS support explicit prosody specification using 'prosody' element as described in W3C Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) recommendations; and the different attributes in 'prosody' element like 'rate', 'pitch' and 'contour' are used as specifications to modify predicted phone durations and pitch contour before passing them to synthesizer.

Example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<maryxml version="0.4"
 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
 xmlns=" http://mary.dfki.de/2002/MaryXML"
 xml:lang="en-US">
  <p>
   <prosody rate="fast" pitch="+10%" contour="(10%,low)(50%,-20%)(80%,+10%)(100%,+5st)">
    Welcome to the world of speech synthesis!
   </prosody>
  </p>
</maryxml>

1. Adjusting Speech Rate

Example 1:

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
 <maryxml version="0.4"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns=" http://mary.dfki.de/2002/MaryXML"
  xml:lang="en-US">
   <p>
    <prosody rate="200%">
      I am now speaking twice as fast.
    </prosody>
   </p>
 </maryxml>

Example 2:

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
 <maryxml version="0.4"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns=" http://mary.dfki.de/2002/MaryXML"
  xml:lang="en-US">
   <p>
    <prosody rate="70%">
     I am now speaking 30% more slowly.
    </prosody>
   </p>
 </maryxml>

2. Adjusting Pitch level

Example 1:

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
 <maryxml version="0.4"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns=" http://mary.dfki.de/2002/MaryXML"
  xml:lang="en-US">
   <p>
    <prosody pitch="low">
      I am now speaking with 3/4 pitch.
    </prosody>
   </p>
 </maryxml>

Example 2:

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
 <maryxml version="0.4"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns=" http://mary.dfki.de/2002/MaryXML"
  xml:lang="en-US">
   <p>
    <prosody pitch="-5st">
     This is five semitones lower.
    </prosody>
   </p>
 </maryxml>

3. Shaping intonation contour

Example 1:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<maryxml version="0.4"
 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
 xmlns=" http://mary.dfki.de/2002/MaryXML"
 xml:lang="en-US">
  <p>
   <prosody contour="(0%,x-low)(30%,low)(50%,medium)(70%,high)(100%,x-high)">
    I am talking with rising intonation.
   </prosody>
  </p>
</maryxml>