Method and apparatus for dynamic adaptation of a large vocabulary speech recognition system and for use of constraints from a database in a large vocabulary speech recognition system
First Claim
1. A speech recognition system for dynamically adding words to an active portion of a total vocabulary, wherein interword relationships between pairs of words of the total vocabulary are defined by a lexical network, the speech recognition system comprising:
- a plurality of nodes corresponding to interword relationships between adjacent words, the interword relationships being formed in accordance with a predefined congruence, wherein the nodes comprise;
A. a plurality of phonetic constraint nodes characterized by a phonetic constraint tuple (x, y, . . . ) of order two or greater, where x, y, . . . are phonetic constraints on adjacent words;
B. a plurality of connection nodes, wherein a set of phonetic constraint nodes corresponds to each connection node for identifying adjacent words from the active vocabulary satisfying the phonetic constraints of the set of phonetic constraint nodes; and
C. a plurality of word class nodes each associated with a word class indicative of syntactic or semantic information of at least one word associated with each word class node, and each word class node being associated with a phonetic constraint nodes; and
an apparatus configured to add a word to the active vocabulary portion of the total vocabulary, wherein the word to be added is selectively specified as a phonemic baseform pronunciation or a spelling and wherein the word has at least beginning and ending phonemes and a pre-associated word class, wherein the apparatus is configured to add the word by determining phonetic constraint nodes for the word corresponding to its phonemes and determining interword relationships for the word based on the connection nodes corresponding to the determined phonetic constraint nodes and based on the plurality of word class nodes and the pre-associated word class and by connecting a pronunciation network of the word to be added to at least one of the phonetic constraint nodes and the word class nodes.
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Abstract
The lexical network of a large-vocabulary speech recognition system is structured to effectuate the rapid and efficient addition of words to the system'"'"'s active vocabulary. The lexical network is structured to include Phonetic Constraint Nodes, which organize the inter-word phonetic information in the network, and Word Class Nodes which organize the syntactic semantic information in the network. Network fragments, corresponding to phoneme pronunciations and labeled to specify permitted interconnections to each other and to phonetic constraint nodes, are precompiled to facilitate the rapid generation of pronunciations for new words and thereby enhance the rapid addition of words to the vocabulary even during speech recognition. Functions defined in accordance with linguistic constraints may be utilized during recognition. Different language models and different vocabularies for different portions of a discourse may also be invoked depending, in part, on the discourse history.
175 Citations
26 Claims
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1. A speech recognition system for dynamically adding words to an active portion of a total vocabulary, wherein interword relationships between pairs of words of the total vocabulary are defined by a lexical network, the speech recognition system comprising:
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a plurality of nodes corresponding to interword relationships between adjacent words, the interword relationships being formed in accordance with a predefined congruence, wherein the nodes comprise;
A. a plurality of phonetic constraint nodes characterized by a phonetic constraint tuple (x, y, . . . ) of order two or greater, where x, y, . . . are phonetic constraints on adjacent words;
B. a plurality of connection nodes, wherein a set of phonetic constraint nodes corresponds to each connection node for identifying adjacent words from the active vocabulary satisfying the phonetic constraints of the set of phonetic constraint nodes; and
C. a plurality of word class nodes each associated with a word class indicative of syntactic or semantic information of at least one word associated with each word class node, and each word class node being associated with a phonetic constraint nodes; and
an apparatus configured to add a word to the active vocabulary portion of the total vocabulary, wherein the word to be added is selectively specified as a phonemic baseform pronunciation or a spelling and wherein the word has at least beginning and ending phonemes and a pre-associated word class, wherein the apparatus is configured to add the word by determining phonetic constraint nodes for the word corresponding to its phonemes and determining interword relationships for the word based on the connection nodes corresponding to the determined phonetic constraint nodes and based on the plurality of word class nodes and the pre-associated word class and by connecting a pronunciation network of the word to be added to at least one of the phonetic constraint nodes and the word class nodes. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
wherein, the apparatus configured to add the word configured to, if the word to be added to the active vocabulary has at least one word class, determine word class nodes corresponding to the word classes of the word to be added, and wherein the interword relationships for the word are determined by the connection nodes corresponding to the determined phonetic constraint nodes and word class nodes for word.
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4. The speech recognition system according to claim 1 in which said phonetic constraint tuples define at least the last phoneme of a first word included in, or to be added to, the lexical network and the first phoneme of a second word included in, or to be added to, the lexical network in a path adjacent said first word.
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5. The system of claim 1 wherein the apparatus configured to add the word is configured to associate the word with a word class node.
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6. The system of claim 1 wherein the apparatus configured to add the word is configured to add a plurality of words to the active vocabulary each having at least beginning and ending phonemes and a pre-associated word class, wherein the apparatus is configured to add the words by determining phonetic constraint nodes for the words corresponding to their phonemes and determining interword relationships for the words based on the connection nodes corresponding to the determined phonetic constraint nodes and based on the plurality of word class nodes and the pre-associated word classes.
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7. The system of claim 6 wherein the preassociated word classes are different.
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8. A speech recognition system for dynamically augmenting an active vocabulary with a word from a total vocabulary, comprising:
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A. a lexical network comprising phonemic sequences defining words of the active vocabulary;
B. constraint nodes defining constraints on permitted interconnection between selected phonemic sequences of words of the active vocabulary, the constraint nodes including phonetic constraint nodes defining phonetic constraints on adjacent words and word class nodes defining semantic or syntactic classes of words corresponding to the word class nodes, the word class nodes being associated with phonetic constraint nodes; and
C. means for establishing links between pronunciation networks of words in the active vocabulary through said constraint nodes and for establishing a link between a first word, having a pre-associated word class, and a second word based on said word class nodes and said pre-associated word class, said first word being selected from a baseform pronunciation or a spelling portion of the total vocabulary and being an addition to the active vocabulary, wherein the link between the first word and the second word is formed by forming a pronunciation network for the first word and connecting at least one of beginning and ending phonemes of the pronunciation network of the first word to one of the word class nodes. - View Dependent Claims (9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)
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15. A method for producing a word pronunciation network for a given word to augment a pre-established active vocabulary of a speech recognition vocabulary, wherein the given word is selected from a baseform pronunciation or spelling vocabularies of the speech recognition vocabulary, comprising:
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A. storing a set of phonemes for forming words of the speech recognition vocabulary;
B. for each phoneme, storing a set of phonetic fragments formed in accordance with predetermined rules that define alternative pronunciations of the phoneme dependent on phonemes with which it may be connected;
C. selecting and linking permissible phonetic fragments for each phoneme in the given word;
D. associating the linked phonetic fragments with a word class, from a plurality of word classes, of the pre-established active vocabulary of the speech recognition vocabulary, the word class being indicative of semantic of syntactic information of the given word; and
E. selectively associating the given word with at least one of the active vocabulary word classes based on the active vocabulary word classes and the associated word class. - View Dependent Claims (16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26)
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Specification