  This paper presents our work on phrase break prediction in the context of
end-to-end TTS systems, motivated by the following questions: (i) Is there any
utility in incorporating an explicit phrasing model in an end-to-end TTS
system?, and (ii) How do you evaluate the effectiveness of a phrasing model in
an end-to-end TTS system? In particular, the utility and effectiveness of
phrase break prediction models are evaluated in in the context of childrens
story synthesis, using listener comprehension. We show by means of perceptual
listening evaluations that there is a clear preference for stories synthesized
after predicting the location of phrase breaks using a trained phrasing model,
over stories directly synthesized without predicting the location of phrase
breaks.
