Context free grammar engine for speech recognition system

• US 20060085193A1
• Filed: 12/07/2005
• Published: 04/20/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 07/20/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Schmid, Philipp Heinz, Lipe, Ralph
• Granted Patent: US 7,206,742 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/257
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/1822 Parsing for meaning understanding
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/193 Formal grammars, e.g. finite state automata, context free grammars or word networks
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/197 Probabilistic grammars, e.g. word n-grams
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/26 Speech to text systems G10L15/08 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/28 Constructional details of speech recognition systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1101 Session protocols

Abstract

The present invention includes a context-free grammar (CFG) engine which communicates through an exposed interface with a speech recognition engine. The context-free grammar engine, in one illustrative embodiment, handles loading and unloading of grammars, as well as maintaining a desired activation state of the grammars which are loaded. Further, the CFG engine represents all loaded grammars, and their corresponding activation states, as a single grammar to the speech recognition engine.

Claims

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16. A method of parsing a speech recognition result from a speech recognition (SR) engine, comprising:

receiving the result from the SR engine at a context-free grammar (CFG) engine having an interface component exposing methods to implement an engine-independent interface to the SR engine and an application-independent interface to an application; and

parsing the result at the CFG engine to obtain a parsed result; and

providing the parsed result to the application from the CFG engine.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein receiving the result comprises:

receiving a rule identifier identifying a rule in a CFG that spawned the result; and

receiving a plurality of transition identifiers identifying transitions through the rule that spawned the result.

18. The method of claim 17 wherein parsing comprises:

constructing an indication of a parse tree based on the rule identifier and the plurality of transition identifiers; and

providing the indication of the parse tree from the CFG engine to the application through the application-independent interface.

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28. A computer readable medium including instructions which, when implemented by a computer, cause the computer to perform the method of parsing a speech recognition result from a speech recognition (SR) engine, comprising:

receiving the result from the SR engine at a context-free grammar (CFG) engine having an interface component exposing methods to implement an engine-independent interface to the SR engine and an application-independent interface to an application; and

parsing the result at the CFG engine to obtain a parsed result; and

providing the parsed result to the application from the CFG engine.

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