Method of key-phase detection and verification for flexible speech understanding
First Claim
1. A method for performing speech recognition of a spoken utterance comprising a plurality of words, the method comprising the steps of:
- performing key-phrase detection based on one or more phrase sub-grammars to generate a plurality of detected key-phrases, each detected key-phrase comprising a sequence of one or more recognized words;
performing verification on one or more of said detected key-phrases by assigning confidence measures thereto and comparing said confidence measures to one or more threshold values, thereby generating a set of verified key-phrase candidates;
connecting the verified key-phrase candidates to generate one or more sentence hypotheses based upon predetermined semantic information; and
performing verification on one or more of said sentence hypotheses, thereby generating at least one verified sentence hypothesis.
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Abstract
A key-phrase detection and verification method that can be advantageously used to realize understanding of flexible (i.e., unconstrained) speech. A "multiple pass" procedure is applied to a spoken utterance comprising a sequence of words (i.e., a "sentence"). First, a plurality of key-phrases are detected (i.e., recognized) based on a set of phrase sub-grammars which may, for example, be specific to the state of the dialogue. These key-phrases are then verified by assigning confidence measures thereto and comparing these confidence measures to a threshold, resulting in a set of verified key-phrase candidates. Next, the verified key-phrase candidates are connected into sentence hypotheses based upon the confidence measures and predetermined (e.g., task-specific) semantic information. And, finally, one or more of these sentence hypotheses are verified to produce a verified sentence hypothesis and, from that, a resultant understanding of the spoken utterance.
276 Citations
32 Claims
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1. A method for performing speech recognition of a spoken utterance comprising a plurality of words, the method comprising the steps of:
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performing key-phrase detection based on one or more phrase sub-grammars to generate a plurality of detected key-phrases, each detected key-phrase comprising a sequence of one or more recognized words; performing verification on one or more of said detected key-phrases by assigning confidence measures thereto and comparing said confidence measures to one or more threshold values, thereby generating a set of verified key-phrase candidates; connecting the verified key-phrase candidates to generate one or more sentence hypotheses based upon predetermined semantic information; and performing verification on one or more of said sentence hypotheses, thereby generating at least one verified sentence hypothesis. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
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17. An apparatus for performing speech recognition of a spoken utterance comprising a plurality of words, the apparatus comprising:
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a key-phrase detector adapted to generate a plurality of detected key-phrases based on one or more phrase sub-grammars, each detected key-phrase comprising a sequence of one or more recognized words; a key-phrase verifier applied to one or more of said detected key-phrases, said key-phrase verifier assigning confidence measures to each of said detected key-phrases and comparing said confidence measures to one or more threshold values, thereby generating a set of verified key-phrase candidates; a sentence hypothesizer adapted to connect the verified key-phrase candidates to generate one or more sentence hypotheses based upon the predetermined semantic information; and a sentence hypothesis verifier applied to one or more of said sentence hypotheses, thereby generating at least one verified sentence hypothesis. - View Dependent Claims (18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32)
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Specification