System and method for augmenting spoken language understanding by correcting common errors in linguistic performance

• US 7,505,906 B2
• Filed: 02/26/2004
• Issued: 03/17/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 02/26/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Rosen, Kenneth H., Lewis, Steven H.
• Primary Examiner(s): Abebe, Daniel D
• Application Number:
  US10/787,782
• Publication Number:
  US 20050192801A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,846 Days
• Field of Search: 704/246, 704/257, 704/250
• US Class Current: 704/246
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/18 using natural language modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/183 using context dependencies, e.g. language models
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/187 Phonemic context, e.g. pronunciation rules, phonotactical constraints or phoneme n-grams

Abstract

A method and system for automatic speech recognition are disclosed. The method comprises receiving speech from a user, the speech including at least one speech error, increasing the probabilities of closely related words to the at least one speech error and processing the received speech using the increased probabilities. A corpora of data having common words that are mis-stated is used to identify and increase the probabilities of related words. The method applies to at least the automatic speech recognition module and the spoken language understanding module.

Claims

1. A method of performing automatic speech recognition, the method comprising:

determining whether a user'"'"'s utterances relate to one of a plurality of corpora of data having modified probabilities of certain words;

if the user'"'"'s utterances relate to one of the plurality of corpora of data, selecting the related corpora of data for use in speech recognition;

receiving speech from a user, the speech including at least one speech error; and

using the selected corpora of data having modified the probabilities to process the received speech to increase the probability of correctly interpreting the received speech with the at least one speech error.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the words having modified probabilities in the corpora of data include words that begin and end with the same phoneme and that have the same number of syllables as the at least one speech error.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the speech error comprises a plurality of error words, and the corpora of data relates to pluralities of words that are closely related in sound to the plurality of error words.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein using the selected corpora of data having modified the probabilities to process the received speech further comprises performing automatic speech recognition on the received speech.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein using the selected corpora of data having increased the probabilities to process the received speech further comprises performing spoken language understanding on the received speech.