METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR MANAGING PRONUNCIATION DICTIONARIES IN A SPEECH APPLICATION

• US 20070239455A1
• Filed: 04/07/2006
• Published: 10/11/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 04/07/2006
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Motorola, Inc. (Motorola Solutions, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Motorola, Inc. (Motorola Solutions, Inc.)
• Inventors: Ma, Changxue, Groble, Michael
• Application Number:
  US11/278,983
• Publication Number:
  US 20070239455A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/260
• 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
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/187 Phonemic context, e.g. pronunciation rules, phonotactical constraints or phoneme n-grams

Abstract

A voice toolkit (100) and a method (700) for managing pronunciation dictionaries are provided. The visual toolkit can include a user-interface (110) for entering in a text and a corresponding spoken utterance, a text-to-speech system (120) for synthesizing a pronunciation from the text, a talking speech recognizer (132) for generating pronunciations of the spoken utterance, and a voice processor (130) for validating at least one pronunciation. A developer can type a text of a word into the toolkit and listen to the pronunciation to determine whether the pronunciation is acceptable. If the pronunciation is incorrect the developer can speak the word for providing a spoken utterance having a correct pronunciation.

Claims

1. A system for developing voice dialogue applications, comprising:

a user-interface for entering a text and a corresponding spoken utterance of a word;

a text-to-speech unit for converting said text to a synthesized pronunciation and for playing said synthesized pronunciation; and

a voice processor for validating said synthesized pronunciation in view of said text and said spoken utterance,

wherein said voice processor and said text-to-speech unit receive said text and said spoken utterance from said user-interface.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein said voice processor includes a speech recognition system for recognizing and updating a phonetic sequence of said spoken utterance by mapping portions of said text to portions of said spoken utterance for identifying phonetic sequences.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein said voice processor translates said phonetic sequence to an orthographic representation for storage in a pronunciation dictionary.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein said user-interface further comprises a grammar editor for adding and annotating words and spoken utterances.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein said user-interface automatically identifies whether a word entered in said grammar editor is included in a pronunciation dictionary, wherein said pronunciation dictionary stores one or more pronunciations of said words and said spoken utterances.

6. The system of claim 4, wherein said user-interface editor further includes a pop-up for showing multiple pronunciations of a confusable word entered in said grammar editor.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein a pronunciation is represented as a phoneme sequence, and said pronunciation is audibly played by clicking on said pronunciation in said pop-up.

8. The system of claim 4, wherein said user-interface further includes a prompt for adding a pronunciation to a pronunciation dictionary, said prompt comprising:

a dictionary selector for selecting a pronunciation dictionary;

a recording unit for recording a pronunciation of a spoken utterance;

a pronunciation field for visually presenting a phonetic representation of said pronunciation; and

an add button for adding said pronunciation to said pronunciation dictionary.

9. The system of claim 4, wherein said text-to-speech unit further includes a letter-to-sound system for synthesizing a list of pronunciation candidates.

10. A voice toolkit for managing pronunciation dictionaries, comprising:

a user-interface for entering in a text and a corresponding spoken utterance;

a talking speech recognizer for generating pronunciations of said spoken utterance; and

a voice processor for validating at least one pronunciation by mapping said text and said spoken utterance for producing at least one pronunciation,

wherein said user-interface adds said validated pronunciation to said pronunciation dictionaries.

11. A method for developing a voice dialogue application comprising:

entering in a text of a word;

producing a list of pronunciation candidates from said text; and

validating a pronunciation candidate corresponding to said word.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein said validating further comprises:

receiving a spoken utterance of said word; and

comparing spoken utterance to said pronunciation candidates,

wherein said comparing includes comparing a phonetic sequence of said spoken utterance to said pronunciations.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

recognizing a phoneme sequence from said spoken utterance; and

formulating a pronunciation from said phoneme sequence.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising:

visually displaying said phoneme sequence; and

audibly playing said pronunciation.

15. The method of claim 12, wherein said comparing identifies discrepancies in a synthesized phoneme sequence of said spoken utterance and a synthesized phoneme sequence of a pronunciation candidate.

16. The method of claim 11, wherein producing a pronunciation candidate includes synthesizing one or more letters of said text.

17. The method of claim 11, wherein said producing further comprises determining whether a pronunciation for said word exists in a pronunciation dictionary, and if not, adding a pronunciation of said word to said pronunciation dictionary, wherein said pronunciation is represented as a phoneme sequence, and if so, determining whether multiple pronunciations are found within said pronunciation dictionary.

18. The method of claim 17, further comprising identifying one or more pronunciation dictionaries for adding a pronunciation of said word, wherein contents of said pronunciation dictionaries are visually displayed.

19. The method of claim 17, further comprising identifying one or more pronunciations in a dictionary and presenting said pronunciations in a visual format.

20. The method of claim 11, further comprising

calculating a confusability of the word for one or more grammars in a pronunciation dictionary;

providing visual feedback for one or more words in a grammar that are confusable; and

branching said grammar to suppress confusability of said word if said confusability of said word with another word associated with said grammar exceeds a threshold.