Continuous mandarin chinese speech recognition system having an integrated tone classifier
First Claim
1. An integrated tone classifier for performing long-term tonal analysis of an input signal of continuous speech of a tonal language, the integrated tone classifier comprising:
- a pitch estimator, having an input coupled to receive the input signal and an output, for estimating the pitch contour of the input signal; and
a long-term tone analyzer, having an input coupled to the output of the pitch estimator and an output forming an output of the integrated tone classifier, for segmenting an estimated pitch contour generated by the pitch estimator into units and for performing long-term tonal analysis on the units of the segmented, estimated pitch.
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Abstract
A speech recognition system for continuous Mandarin Chinese speech comprises a microphone, an A/D converter, a syllable recognition system, an integrated tone classifier, and a confidence score augmentor. The syllable recognition system generates N-best theories with initial confidence scores. The integrated tone classifier has a pitch estimator to estimate the pitch of the input once and a long-term tone analyzer to segment the estimated pitch according to the syllables of each of the N-best theories. The long-term tone analyzer performs long-term tonal analysis on the segmented, estimated pitch and generates a long-term tonal confidence signal. The confidence score augmentor receives the initial confidence scores and the long-term tonal confidence signals, modifies each initial confidence score according to the corresponding long-term tonal confidence signal, re-ranks the N-best theories according to the augmented confidence scores, and outputs the N-best theories.
66 Citations
20 Claims
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1. An integrated tone classifier for performing long-term tonal analysis of an input signal of continuous speech of a tonal language, the integrated tone classifier comprising:
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a pitch estimator, having an input coupled to receive the input signal and an output, for estimating the pitch contour of the input signal; and a long-term tone analyzer, having an input coupled to the output of the pitch estimator and an output forming an output of the integrated tone classifier, for segmenting an estimated pitch contour generated by the pitch estimator into units and for performing long-term tonal analysis on the units of the segmented, estimated pitch. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)
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7. A system for recognizing an input signal of continuous speech of a tonal language, the system comprising:
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a syllable recognition system, having an input and an output, for determining phonetic structures of syllables, for performing short-term tonal analysis of the input, and for generating N-best theories with initial confidence scores, the input of the syllable recognition system coupled to receive the input signal; and an integrated tone classifier, having a first and second input and an output, the first input coupled to receive the input signal and the second input coupled to the output of the syllable recognition system to receive the N-best theories with initial confidence scores, for performing long-term tonal analysis to determine the tone of syllables of the theories and for generating a long-term tonal confidence signal for each theory.
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16. A method for recognizing an input signal of continuous speech, having a pitch, of a tonal language, the method comprising the steps of:
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determining N-best theories with initial confidence scores; estimating the pitch contour of the input signal; segmenting the pitch contour into units according to each of the N-best theories; comparing the units to the tones of the tonal language; generating a long-term confidence signal for each theory, the long-term confidence signal indicating how well the units of a theory match the tones of the tonal language; and modifying an initial confidence score according to a long-term tonal confidence signal to generate an augmented confidence score. - View Dependent Claims (17)
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18. A system for recognizing an input signal of continuous speech of a tonal language comprising:
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means for determining N-best theories with initial confidence scores; means for estimating the pitch contour of the input signal; means for segmenting the pitch contour into units according to each of the N-best theories; means for comparing the units to the tones of the tonal language; and means for modifying an initial confidence score according to a long-term tonal confidence signal to generate an augmented confidence score. - View Dependent Claims (19, 20)
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Specification