Automated sentence planning in a task classification system

• US 8,620,669 B2
• Filed: 05/14/2012
• Issued: 12/31/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 03/14/2001
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Nuance Communications, Inc. (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property II LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Rambow, Owen Christopher, Rogati, Monica, Walker, Marilyn A.
• Primary Examiner(s): YEN, ERIC L
• Application Number:
  US13/470,913
• Publication Number:
  US 20130041654A1
• Time in Patent Office: 596 Days
• Field of Search: 704/9, 704/270, 704/270.1, 704/275
• US Class Current: 704/275
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/027 Concept to speech synthesisers; Generation of natural phrases from machine-based concepts generation of parameters for speech synthesis out of text G10L13/08
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/1822 Parsing for meaning understanding
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/22 Procedures used during a speech recognition process, e.g. man-machine dialogue
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2201/40 using speech recognition speech recognition per se G10L15/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2203/355 Interactive dialogue design tools, features or methods
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/4936 Speech interaction details speech recognition per se G10L15/00

Abstract

Disclosed is a task classification system that interacts with a user. The task classification system may include a recognizer that may recognize symbols in the user'"'"'s input communication, and a natural language understanding unit that may determine whether the user'"'"'s input communication can be understood. If the user'"'"'s input communication can be understood, the natural language understanding unit may generate understanding data. The system may also include a communicative goal generator that may generate communicative goals based on the symbols recognized by the recognizer and understanding data from the natural language understanding unit. The generated communicative goals may be related to information needed to be obtained from the user. The system may further include a sentence planning unit that may automatically plan one or more sentences based on the communicative goals generated by the communicative goal generator with at least one of the sentences plans being output to the user.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

generating, via a processor, a plurality of sentence plans based on a derived communicative goal and a dialog history, wherein each sentence plan of the plurality of sentence plans is a viable and potentially usable prompt in response to a speech input of a user; and

outputting a sentence plan as a best sentence plan for generating a realization for the derived communicative goal from among the plurality of sentence plans.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising generating the realization by applying a set of linguistic rules.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein outputting the sentence plan comprises using a text-to-speech converter.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising selecting the sentence plan from the plurality of sentence plans by:

ranking the plurality of sentence plans based on relationship to the derived communicative goal, to yield ranked sentence plans; and

selecting one of the ranked sentence plans as the sentence plan.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the derived communicative goal is derived from an utterance obtained during an interactive speech dialog.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the derived communicative goal is derived from non-verbal communications.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the derived communicative goal is determined from a plurality of communicative goals.

8. A system comprising:

a processor; and

a computer-readable storage device having instructions stored which, when executed on the processor, perform operations comprising;

generating a plurality of sentence plans based on a derived communicative goal and a dialog history, wherein each sentence plan of the plurality of sentence plans is a viable and potentially usable prompt in response to a speech input of a user; and

outputting a sentence plan as a best sentence plan for generating a realization for the derived communicative goal from among the plurality of sentence plans.

9. The system of claim 8, the computer-readable storage device having additional instructions stored which result in the operations further comprising generating the realization by applying a set of linguistic rules.

10. The system of claim 8, wherein outputting the sentence plan comprises using a text-to-speech converter.

11. The system of claim 8, the computer-readable storage device having additional instructions stored which result in the operations further comprising selecting the sentence plan from the plurality of sentence plans by:

ranking the plurality of sentence plans based on relationship to the derived communicative goal, to yield ranked sentence plans; and

selecting one of the ranked sentence plans as the sentence plan.

12. The system of claim 8, wherein the derived communicative goal is derived from an utterance obtained during an interactive speech dialog.

13. The system of claim 8, wherein the derived communicative goal is derived from non-verbal communications.

14. The system of claim 8, wherein the derived communicative goal is determined from a plurality of communicative goals.

15. A computer-readable storage device having instructions stored which, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations comprising:

generating a plurality of sentence plans based on a derived communicative goal and a dialog history, wherein each sentence plan of the plurality of sentence plans is a viable and potentially usable prompt in response to a speech input of a user; and

outputting a sentence plan as a best sentence plan for generating a realization for the derived communicative goal from among the plurality of sentence plans.

16. The computer readable storage device of claim 15, the computer-readable storage device having additional instructions stored which result in the operations further comprising generating the realization by applying a set of linguistic rules.

17. The computer readable storage device of claim 15, wherein outputting the sentence plan comprises using a text-to-speech converter.

18. The computer readable storage device of claim 15, the computer-readable storage device having additional instructions stored which result in the operations further comprising selecting the sentence plan from the plurality of sentence plans by:

ranking the plurality of sentence plans based on relationship to the derived communicative goal, to yield ranked sentence plans; and

selecting one of the ranked sentence plans as the sentence plan.

19. The computer readable storage device of claim 15, wherein the derived communicative goal is derived from an utterance obtained during an interactive speech dialog.

20. The computer readable storage device of claim 15, wherein the derived communicative goal is derived from non-verbal communications.