English Pronunciation Lowering

Version: 0.1-draft

Weksa owns the step from flavored English text to a pronunciation plan. AquaSynth owns the later step from pronunciation intent to sound.

interlingua packet
  -> projected agent-local context
  -> flavored English dialogue
  -> English pronunciation plan
  -> downstream speech system

This is still Weksa work because the pronunciation plan belongs to the meaning and dialogue layer: phrase grouping, emphasis, reduced forms, and word choice are part of the utterance Weksa just created.

The long-term primary handoff is the learned Utterance Embedding Handoff. This pronunciation plan is the inspectable audit/debug lane: useful for fixtures, phoneme strings, and review, but not the only representation of delivery.

Objective

Produce a deterministic, inspectable pronunciation plan for English output.

The plan should say:

what text is being pronounced
how it was normalized
which tokens are words, punctuation, or phrase boundaries
which pronunciation source was used for each word
what broad IPA sequence should be sent downstream
where phrase breaks and emphasis fall
what remains uncertain or hand-authored

Authority

Weksa owns:

text normalization
tokenization
lexicon lookup
OOV pronunciation choice
ARPABET-to-IPA conversion when using CMUdict-style entries
phrase grouping
lexical stress preservation
dialogue-driven emphasis
pronunciation trace

AquaSynth owns:

IPA parsing
phonetic feature interpretation
language/voice phonology profile
timing curves
articulatory gestures
tract morphology
rendered audio

Reference Spine

Recommended first spine:

Use CMUdict-style ARPABET entries for known English words.
Preserve CMUdict stress digits on vowels.
Convert ARPABET to broad IPA with a documented table.
Add phrase breaks and emphasis from the English lowering output.
Mark hand-authored or uncertain pronunciations explicitly.

Useful reference tools:

CMU Pronouncing Dictionary for English ARPABET pronunciations.
eSpeak NG --ipa or phoneme output as an external checker.
Phonetisaurus or another G2P model later for OOV words.

The first version may be hand-authored fixture data. The contract matters before automation. Yes, this is paperwork with teeth. Annoying, but it bites the right thing.

Pronunciation Plan Shape

schema_version: weksa.english_pronunciation_plan.v0
source_output_ref:
dialect:
orthographic_text:
normalization:
  text:
  notes:
tokens:
  - id:
    text:
    kind:
    pronunciation_source:
    arpabet:
    ipa:
    stress:
    notes:
phrasing:
  groups:
    - id:
      token_ids:
      boundary_after:
      prominence:
ipa:
  broad:
  with_boundaries:
trace:
  decisions:
  uncertainties:

Minimum Pass Criteria

Every pronounced word has a token.
Every word token has IPA.
Unknown or hand-authored pronunciations are labeled.
Phrase boundaries do not contradict punctuation or intended delivery.
Emphasis follows dialogue intent, not arbitrary prettiness.
The plan can be consumed without reading the original prose document.

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