Speech processing apparatus, speech processing method, program, and recording medium

• US 20060020461A1
• Filed: 07/20/2005
• Published: 01/26/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 07/22/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Ogawa, Hiroaki
• Granted Patent: US 7,657,430 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/251
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/04 Segmentation; Word boundary detection
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/063 Training
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2015/0631 Creating reference templates; Clustering

Abstract

An apparatus inputs an utterance and performs speech recognition on the input utterance. The speech processing apparatus determines whether the recognition result contains an unknown word. If it is determined that the recognition result contains an unknown word, it is then determined whether the recognition result is rejected or not. If it is determined that the recognition result is not rejected, a word corresponding to the unknown word contained in the recognition result is required. The apparatus can be used as a speech processing apparatus.

Claims

1. A speech processing apparatus for processing an input utterance and registering a word contained in the input utterance on the basis of the processing result, comprising:

recognition means for recognizing the input utterance;

unknown word determination means for determining whether the recognition result of the input utterance obtained by the recognition means contains an unknown word;

recognition result rejection means for determining whether the recognition result determined by the unknown word determination means to contain an unknown word is rejected or not; and

word extracting means for acquiring a word corresponding to the unknown word contained in the recognition result determined not to be rejected by the recognition result rejection means.

2. The speech processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the recognition result rejection means determines whether the recognition result is rejected or not on the basis of an unknown-word language model for a sentence containing an unknown word.

3. The speech processing apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the unknown-word language model is a grammar model written with a finite state automaton.

4. The speech processing apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the unknown-word language model is a statistical language model.

5. The speech processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the recognition result rejection means determines whether the recognition result is rejected or not on the basis of a confidence measure for the recognition result.

6. The speech processing apparatus according to claim 5, wherein the recognition result rejection means determines whether the recognition result is rejected or not on the basis of a confidence measure for a known word adjacent to the unknown word contained in the recognition result.

7. A speech processing method for processing an input utterance and registering a word contained in the input utterance on the basis of the processing result, comprising the steps of:

(a) recognizing the input utterance;

(b) determining whether the recognition result of the input utterance obtained by step (a) contains an unknown word;

(c) determining whether the recognition result determined at step (b) to contain an unknown word is rejected or not; and

(d) acquiring a word corresponding to the unknown word contained in the recognition result determined not to be rejected by step (c).

8. A computer-readable recording medium storing a program, the program processing an input utterance and registering a word contained in the input utterance on the basis of the processing result, the program including the steps of:

(a) recognizing the input utterance;

(b) determining whether the recognition result of the input utterance obtained by step (a) contains an unknown word;

(c) determining whether the recognition result determined at step (b) to contain an unknown word is rejected or not; and

(d) acquiring a word corresponding to the unknown word contained in the recognition result determined not to be rejected by step (c).

9. A program for processing an input utterance and registering a word contained in the input utterance on the basis of the processing result, the program comprising program code for causing a computer to execute the steps of:

(a) recognizing the input utterance;

(b) determining whether the recognition result of the input utterance obtained by step (a) contains an unknown word;

(c) determining whether the recognition result determined at step (b) to contain an unknown word is rejected or not; and

(d) acquiring a word corresponding to the unknown word contained in the recognition result determined not to be rejected by step (c).

10. A speech processing apparatus for processing input utterance and registering a word contained in the input utterance on the basis of the processing result, comprising:

a recognition unit configured to recognize the input utterance;

an unknown word determination unit configured to determine whether the recognition result of the input utterance obtained by the recognition unit contains an unknown word;

a recognition result rejection unit configured to determine whether the recognition result determined by the unknown word determination unit to contain an unknown word is rejected or not; and

a word extracting unit configured to acquire a word corresponding to the unknown word contained in the recognition result determined not to be rejected by the recognition result rejection unit.