Method and system for automatic detecting morphemes in a task classification system using lattices

• US 7,620,548 B2
• Filed: 09/13/2007
• Issued: 11/17/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 11/05/1999
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Nuance Communications, Inc. (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property II LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Gorin, Allen Louis, Petrovska-Delacretaz, Dijana, Riccardi, Giuseppe, Wright, Jeremy Huntley
• Primary Examiner(s): ABEBE, DANIEL DEMELASH
• Application Number:
  US11/854,720
• Publication Number:
  US 20080046243A1
• Time in Patent Office: 796 Days
• Field of Search: 704/251, 704/252, 704/257
• US Class Current: 704/251
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/08 Speech classification or search

Abstract

The invention concerns a method and system for detecting morphemes in a user'"'"'s communication. The method may include recognizing a lattice of phone strings from the user'"'"'s input communication, the lattice representing a distribution over the phone strings, and detecting morphemes in the user'"'"'s input communication using the lattice. The morphemes may be acoustic and/or non-acoustic. The morphemes may represent any unit or sub-unit of communication including phones, diphones, phone-phrases, syllables, grammars, words, gestures, tablet strokes, body movements, mouse clicks, etc. The training speech may be verbal, non-verbal, a combination of verbal and non-verbal, or multimodal.

Claims

1. A method of task classification which operates on one or more task objectives of a user, comprising:

forming a lattice of phone strings representing morphemes in a user'"'"'s input communication, the lattice representing a distribution over the phone strings;

detecting morphemes in the user'"'"'s input communication using the formed lattice; and

making task-type classification decisions based on the detected morphemes in the user'"'"'s input communication.

2. An automated task classification system that detects morphemes using lattices and operates on one or more task objectives of a user, comprising:

a recognizer that forms a lattice of phone strings representing morphemes in a user'"'"'s input communication, the lattice representing a distribution over the phone strings;

a morpheme detector that detects morphemes in the user'"'"'s input communication using the formed lattice; and

a task classification processor that makes task-type classification decisions based on the detected morphemes in the user'"'"'s input communication.

3. The automated task classification system of claim 2, wherein the morphemes include verbal speech.

4. The automated task classification system of claim 3, wherein the morphemes further comprise non-verbal sub-morphemes comprising at least one of gestures, body movements, head movements, non-responses, text, keyboard entries, keypad entries, mouse clicks, DTMF codes, pointers, stylus, cable set-top box entries, graphical user interface entries and touchscreen entries.

5. The automated task classification system of claim 2, wherein the morphemes are expressed in multimodal form.

6. The automated task classification system of claim 2, wherein the user'"'"'s input communication is derived from the verbal and non-verbal speech and the user'"'"'s environment.

7. The automated task classification system of claim 2, wherein the morphemes in the user'"'"'s input communication include sub-morphemes that are derived from the user'"'"'s actions, including the user'"'"'s focus of attention.

8. The automated task classification system of claim 2, wherein the task classification processor enters into a dialog with the user to obtain a feedback response from the user.

9. The automated task classification system of claim 2, wherein the task classification processor prompts the user to provide a feedback response includes additional information with respect to the user'"'"'s initial input communication.

10. The automated task classification system of claim 2, wherein the task classification processor prompts the user to provide a feedback response that includes confirmation with respect to at least one of the set of task objectives determined in the classification decision.

11. The automated task classification system of claim 2, wherein the task classification processor routes the user'"'"'s input communication based on the classification decision.

12. The automated task classification system of claim 2, wherein the task objective is performed after the task classification processor routes the user'"'"'s input communication.

13. The automated task classification system of claim 2, wherein the system operates in conjunction with one or more communication networks, the one or more communication networks including at least one of a telephone network, the Internet, an intranet, Cable TV network, a local area network (LAN), and a wireless communication network.

14. The automated task classification system of claim 2, wherein the system is used for customer care purposes.

15. The automated task classification system of claim 2, wherein the classification decisions and corresponding user input communications are collected for automated learning purposes.