REDUCING A SIZE OF A COMPILED SPEECH RECOGNITION GRAMMAR

• US 20090171663A1
• Filed: 01/02/2008
• Published: 07/02/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 01/02/2008
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Nuance Communications, Inc. (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: BERGL, VLADIMIR, HAMPL, RADEK, ECKHART, JOHN W., BADT, DANIEL E., RUBACK, HARVEY M., PALGON, JONATHAN
• Application Number:
  US11/968,248
• Publication Number:
  US 20090171663A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/257
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/187 Phonemic context, e.g. pronunciation rules, phonotactical constraints or phoneme n-grams

Abstract

The present invention discloses creating and using speech recognition grammars of reduced size. The reduced speech recognition grammars can include a set of entries, each entry having a unique identifier and a phonetic representation that is used when matching speech input against the entries. Each entry can lack a textual spelling corresponding to the phonetic representation. The reduced speech recognition grammar can be digitally encoded and stored in a computer readable media, such as a hard drive or flash memory of a portable speech enabled device.

Claims

1. A compiled speech recognition grammar comprising:

a plurality of entries, each entry having a unique identifier and a phonetic representation that is used when matching speech input against the entries, each entry lacking a textual spelling corresponding to the phonetic representation, wherein said compiled speech recognition grammar is digitally encoded and stored in a computer readable media.

2. The grammar of claim 1, wherein said compiled speech recognition grammar is a context dependent grammar.

3. The grammar of claim 1, wherein said compiled speech recognition grammar is a context independent grammar.

4. The grammar of claim 1, wherein said compiled speech recognition grammar is a speaker dependent grammar.

5. The grammar of claim 1, wherein said compiled speech recognition grammar is a speaker independent grammar.

6. The grammar of claim 1, wherein each of the plurality of entries are organized in a hierarchy structure by phonetic commonalities.

7. The grammar of claim 6, wherein each terminal node of the hierarchy structure is associated with one of the unique identifiers.

8. A method for reducing a size of speech recognition grammars comprising:

omitting the textual representation for a spelling of a plurality of items in a compiled speech recognition grammar, where each grammar item comprises a unique item identifier and a phonetic representation of the entry, wherein the compiled recognition grammar is digitally encoded and stored in a computer readable media.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

receiving audio input containing speech;

speech processing the audio input using the compiled speech recognition grammar;

determining at least one grammar item of the speech recognition grammar matching the audio input from the speech processing system; and

performing a programmatic action involving the at least one grammar item, which identifies the grammar item by the unique item identifier.

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising:

determining a need for a textual representation for the grammar item;

querying a data store of content items using the unique key to determine a textual spelling of the grammar item, wherein the content items of the data store comprises an entry for each of the grammar items indexed by the unique item identifier; and

executing a programmatic action involving the determined textual spelling.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the computer readable medium is a persistent memory store of a speech enabled computing device, which is configured to respond to spoken phrases corresponding to the plurality of items, said method further comprising:

identifying a content item in the queried data store indexed by the unique item identifier, which initially lacks a corresponding entry in the compiled speech recognition;

generating speech recognition data including the phonetic representation by executing a programmatic action within the speech enabled computing device; and

adding an entry to the compiled speech recognition grammar that includes the generated phonetic representation and the unique item identifier.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein the computer readable medium is a persistent memory store of a speech enabled computing device, which is configured to respond to spoken phrases corresponding to the plurality of items, wherein said speech enabled computing device is at least one of a portable and an embedded computing device.

13. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

optimizing said plurality of entries within the compiled speech grammar in a hierarchy structure by phonetic commonalities.

14. A speech enabled computing device comprising:

a content data store comprising a plurality of content items, each content item having an associated textual description providing an item spelling and a unique identifier;

a content handler that is software stored in a medium and executable by a speech enabled computing device, which causes the device to perform at least one programmatic action involving one of the content items;

audio transducer configured to capture audio input;

a speech recognition grammar comprising a plurality of grammar entries, each grammar entry having the unique identifier and a phonetic representation that is used when matching speech input against the grammar entries, wherein each grammar entry lacks a textual spelling corresponding to the phonetic representation, wherein said speech recognition grammar is digitally encoded and stored in a computer readable media; and

a speech recognition engine configured to speech recognize audio input captured by the audio transducer in accordance with the entries of the speech recognition grammar, wherein results of the speech recognition engine are used to trigger programmatic actions of the content handler relating to the content items.

15. The speech enabled computing device of claim 14, further comprising:

a grammar compiler configured to automatically generate grammar entries for the speech recognition grammar for the content items, wherein the grammar compiler is software of the speech enabled computing device stored in a machine readable media.

16. The speech enabled computing device of claim 14, wherein said speech enabled computing device is at least one of a portable computing device and embedded computing device.

17. The speech enabled computing device of claim 14, wherein said speech enabled computing device is one of a mobile phone, personal data assistant, personal navigation device, vehicle navigation device, and a portable media player.

18. The speech enabled computing device of claim 14, wherein each of the plurality of grammar entries are organized in a hierarchy structure by phonetic commonalities.

19. The speech enabled computing device of claim 18, wherein each terminal node of the hierarchy structure is associated with one of the unique identifiers.