Systems and methods for building a native language phoneme lexicon having native pronunciations of non-native words derived from non-native pronunciations

• US 7,472,061 B1
• Filed: 03/31/2008
• Issued: 12/30/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 03/31/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Janke, Eric, Sicconi, Roberto, Alewine, Neal, Sharp, Paul
• Primary Examiner(s): Hudspeth; David R
• Assistant Examiner(s): Sked; Matthew J
• Application Number:
  US12/059,713
• Time in Patent Office: 274 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 704/243
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/08 Text analysis or generation of parameters for speech synthesis out of text, e.g. grapheme to phoneme translation, prosody generation or stress or intonation determination
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/063 Training
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/187 Phonemic context, e.g. pronunciation rules, phonotactical constraints or phoneme n-grams

Abstract

Systems and methods are provided for automatically building a native phonetic lexicon for a speech-based application trained to process a native (base) language, wherein the native phonetic lexicon includes native phonetic transcriptions (base forms) for non-native (foreign) words which are automatically derived from non-native phonetic transcriptions of the non-native words.

Claims

1. A method for generating base forms for non-native language in a speech-based system trained for processing a native language, the method comprising:

receiving input textual data containing both native language and non-native language words;

identifying the native language and non-native language words within the textual data;

generating a native phonetic transcription of the native language word using phonetic units of the native language;

generating a non-native phonetic transcription of the non-native language word using phonetic units of the non-native language;

generating a native pronunciation of the non-native language word using phonetic units of the native language by mapping the phonetic units of the non-native phonetic transcription to acoustically similar phonetic units of the native language; and

storing the input textual data with the corresponding native phonetic transcription of the native language word and the mapped native pronunciation of the non-native language word in a native phonetic lexicon.