Disambiguating text that is to be converted to speech using configurable lexeme based rules

• US 8,538,743 B2
• Filed: 03/21/2007
• Issued: 09/17/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 03/21/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cerence Operating Company (Cerence Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Nuance Communications, Inc. (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Gago, Oswaldo, Hancock, Steven M., Smith, Maria E.
• Primary Examiner(s): SPOONER, LAMONT M
• Application Number:
  US11/689,271
• Publication Number:
  US 20080235004A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,372 Days
• Field of Search: 704/1, 704/9, 704/10, 704/258, 704/260
• US Class Current: 704/9
• 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

Abstract

A software language including language constructs for disambiguating text that is to be converted to speech using configurable lexeme based rules. The language can include at least one conditional statement and a significance indicator. The conditional statement can define a sense of usage for a lexeme. The significance indicator can define a criteria for selecting an associated sense of usage. The language can also include an action expression that is associated with a conditional statement that defines a set of programmatic actions to be executed upon a selection of the associated usage sense. The conditional statement can include a context range specification that defines a scope of an input string for examination when evaluating the conditional statement. Further, the conditional statement can include a directive that represents a defined condition of the lexeme or the text surrounding the lexeme.

Claims

1. A computer program product comprising a computer-readable storage device encoded with computer-executable instructions that, when executed by a computing device, perform a method for disambiguating text that is to be converted to speech using lexeme based rules, said instructions comprising:

at least one conditional statement for use in a text disambiguation engine of a text-to-speech system, wherein the conditional statement defines a sense of usage for a lexeme and wherein the conditional statement includes a context range specification, the at least one conditional statement including a first conditional statement for determining a sense of usage of a lexeme as an acronym and a second conditional statement for determining a sense of usage of the lexeme as a word, wherein the first conditional statement and/or the second conditional statement distinguishes between the sense of usage of the lexeme as an acronym and the sense of usage of the lexeme as a word at least in part by requiring a specified word within a specified context range of words of the lexeme;

a significance indicator associated with each conditional statement, wherein the significance indicator defines a criteria for selecting an associated sense of usage; and

in response to selecting a sense of usage corresponding to the lexeme used as an acronym, replacing the lexeme with a defined full text equivalent.

2. The language of claim 1, wherein the values permitted for the significance indicator include a value selected from a group of values consisting of necessary, sufficient, and a numeric value, wherein necessary indicates that an associated conditional statement must be satisfied for the corresponding sense of usage to be chosen, wherein sufficient indicates that when the associated conditional statement is satisfied that the corresponding sense of usage is to be chosen without evaluating subsequent senses of usage, and wherein the numeric value represents a score for the corresponding sense when the corresponding conditional statement is satisfied, and wherein the sense of usage having the highest associated score is chosen.

3. The computer program product of claim 1, further comprising:

an action expression associated with the conditional statement, wherein the action expression defines a set of programmatic actions to be executed upon a selection of the associated usage sense.

4. The computer program product of claim 3, wherein values permitted for the action expression include a substitute action, a spell_out action, and an insert_—

phones action.

5. The language of claim 1, wherein the conditional statement comprises at least one directive that represents a defined condition of at least one of the lexeme and text surrounding the lexeme.

6. The language of claim 5, wherein a value for the directive comprises at least three values selected from a group consisting of POS, word, word_set, upper_case, lower_case, mixed_case, capitalized, digit_string, and punctuation.

7. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein the language conforms to a Pronunciation Lexicon Specification (PLS).

8. A method for disambiguating lexemes in text-to-speech processing comprising:

loading a set of disambiguation rules for use in a text disambiguation engine of a text-to-speech system, wherein the disambiguation rules include a plurality of entries that define usage senses for lexemes, wherein each usage sense for each of the entries comprises;

at least one conditional statement that defines a sense of usage for a lexeme; and

a significance indicator associated with the conditional statement, wherein the significance indicator defines a criteria for selecting an associated sense of usage and wherein the at least one conditional statement includes a context range specification, wherein the set of disambiguation rules includes a first conditional statement for determining a sense of usage of a lexeme as an acronym and a second conditional statement for determining a sense of usage of the lexeme as a word, wherein the first conditional statement and/or the second conditional statement distinguishes between the sense of usage of the lexeme as an acronym and the sense of usage of the lexeme as a word at least in part by requiring a specified word within a specified context range of words of the lexeme;

identifying, by the text disambiguation engine of the text-to-speech system, an ambiguous lexeme in a text input string;

obtaining, by the text disambiguation engine of the text-to-speech system, the entry in the disambiguation rules that pertains to the identified lexeme, wherein the entry comprises at least one usage sense;

determining, by the text disambiguation engine of the text-to-speech system, an applicable one of said at least one usage sense for the identified lexeme based upon an evaluation of the disambiguation rules associated with said at least one usage sense; and

in response to determining a usage sense corresponding to the lexeme used as an acronym, replacing the lexeme with a defined full text equivalent.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the obtained entry comprises a plurality of different usage senses, and wherein a text-to-speech result of the speech processing engine for the identified lexeme varies depending upon the determined usage sense.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein said set of disambiguation rules are rules used by the text disambiguation engine for disambiguating acronyms, abbreviations, and homographs.

11. The method of claim 8, wherein particular ones of the usage senses comprise an optional action expression, where each action expression is associated with the conditional statement, and wherein the action expression defines a set of programmatic actions to be executed upon a selection of the associated usage sense.

12. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

performing an action defined by the determined usage sense.

13. The method of claim 8, wherein the determining step further comprises:

evaluating at least one conditional statement associated with the usage sense;

when the conditional statement is satisfied, evaluating a significance indicator associated with the sense; and

when the significance indicator is a value of sufficient, selecting the associated sense.

14. A computer-readable storage device encoded with computer-executable instructions that, when executed by a computing device, perform the method of claim 8.

15. A text-to-speech system for converting text input to speech output comprising:

a text disambiguation engine configured to evaluate lexemes in accordance with a set of disambiguation rules that define usage senses for the lexemes, each usage sense having a conditional statement and a significance indicator, wherein the conditional statement defines a set of conditions applicable for selecting the usage sense, wherein the significance indicator defines an effect of the associated conditional statement evaluating as TRUE, wherein the different text-to-speech results are produced by the text-to-speech system for an evaluated lexeme depending upon which of the associated usage senses are determined to be applicable by the text disambiguation engine for a particular usage instance, wherein the conditional statement includes a context range specification, wherein the set of disambiguation rules includes a first conditional statement for determining a sense of usage of a lexeme as an acronym and a second conditional statement for determining a sense of usage of the lexeme as a word, wherein the first conditional statement and/or the second conditional statement distinguishes between the sense of usage of the lexeme as an acronym and the sense of usage of the lexeme as a word at least in part by requiring a specified word within a specified context range of words of the lexeme, and to replace the lexeme with a defined full text equivalent in response to selecting a usage sense corresponding to the lexeme used as an acronym.

16. The text-to-speech system of claim 15, wherein an action expression is able to be associated with each usage sense, wherein the action expression defines a set of programmatic actions to be executed upon a selection of the associated usage sense.

17. The text-to-speech system of claim 15, further comprising:

a text normalizer; and

a phonetizer, wherein both the text normalizer and the phonetizer use the text disambiguation engine to resolve ambiguities.