SENTENCE SIMPLIFICATION FOR SPOKEN LANGUAGE UNDERSTANDING

• US 20170011025A1
• Filed: 09/21/2016
• Published: 01/12/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 05/12/2011
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Hakkani-Tur, Dilek, Tur, Gokhan, Heck, Larry Paul, Parthasarathy, Sarangarajan
• Application Number:
  US15/271,859
• Publication Number:
  US 20170011025A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/211 Syntactic parsing, e.g. based on context-free grammar [CFG] or unification grammars
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/253 Grammatical analysis; Style critique
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/30 Semantic analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/22 Procedures used during a speech recognition process, e.g. man-machine dialogue
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/26 Speech to text systems G10L15/08 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2015/223 Execution procedure of a spoken command

Abstract

Sentence simplification may be provided. A spoken phrase may be received and converted to a text phrase. An intent associated with the text phrase may be identified. The text phrase may then be reformatted according to the identified intent and a task may be performed according to the reformatted text phrase.

Claims

1. A method for providing sentence simplification, the method comprising:

receiving a spoken utterance;

converting the spoken utterance to a text phrase;

identifying a top level predicate associated with the text phrase;

reformatting the text phrase according to the identified predicate; and

performing a task according to the reformatted text phrase.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying the top level predicate associated with the text phrase comprises performing a dependency parse on the text phrase.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein performing a dependency parse comprises:

identifying a top level predicate; and

excluding at least one auxiliary word in the text phrase.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the at least one auxiliary word comprises a dependent of the top level predicate.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the at least one auxiliary word comprises at least one predefined auxiliary keyword.

6. The method of claim 3, wherein identifying the top level predicate comprises evaluating a weighting criterion associated with each word of the text phrase.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein reformatting the text phrase according to the identified predicate comprises defining a domain associated with the task.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising filling at least one semantic slot associated with the defined domain.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the slot is filled with at least one word of the text phrase.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the at least one word of the text phrase is not associated with the reformatted text phrase.

11. A computer-readable medium which stores a set of instructions which when executed performs a method for providing sentence simplification, the method executed by the set of instructions comprising:

identifying a predicate associated with a text phrase, wherein the text phrase comprises a plurality of words;

reformatting the text phrase according to the identified predicate, wherein reformatting the text phrase comprises excluding at least one of the plurality of words;

performing a task according to the reformatted text phrase; and

displaying a result associated with the task to a user.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the text phrase comprises a conversion of a spoken phrase received from the user.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the text phrase is associated with a web search query and identifying the predicate comprises defining a target domain.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the reformatted text phrase comprises at least one keyword associated with the target domain.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 14, wherein the target domain comprises a plurality of semantic slots.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, further comprising:

filling at least one of the semantic slots with at least one slot word of the plurality of words.

17. The computer-readable medium of claim 16, wherein filling the at least one of the semantic slots comprises associating the at least one slot word of the plurality of words with the at least one of the semantic slots according to at least one second word of the plurality of words.

18. The computer-readable medium of claim 17, further comprising performing a dependency parse on the text phrase.

19. The computer-readable medium of claim 18, wherein the at least one second word comprises a dependent word associated with the at least one slot word during the dependency parse.

20. A system for providing sentence simplification, the system comprising:

a memory storage; and

a processing unit coupled to the memory storage, wherein the processing unit is operative to;

receive a spoken phrase from a user;

convert the spoken phrase to a text phrase, wherein the text phrase comprises a plurality of words,

perform a dependency parse on the text phrase,

identify a top level predicate of the text phrase,

reformat the text phrase according to the top level predicate, wherein the reformatted text phrase excludes at least one first word of the plurality of words,

define an intent domain according to the reformatted text phrase, wherein the defined intent comprises a plurality of syntactic slots,

fill at least one of the semantic slots with the at least one first word, wherein the at least one first word is associated with the at least one syntactic slot according to at least one dependent word of the at least one first word,

perform a task according to the defined intent and the filled at least one semantic slot, and

display a result of the performed task to the user.