Use of syntax and multiple alternatives in the VODIS voice operated database inquiry system

Young, SJ and Russell, NH and Thornton, JHS (1991) Use of syntax and multiple alternatives in the VODIS voice operated database inquiry system. Computer Speech and Language, 5. pp. 65-80. ISSN 0885-2308

Abstract

The paper describes the architecture of VODIS, a voice operated database inquiry system, and presents some experiments which investigate the effects on performance of varying the level of a priori syntactic constraints. The VODIS system includes a novel mechanism for incorporating context-free grammatical constraints directly into the word recognition algorithm. This allows the degree of a priori constraint to be smoothly varied and provides for the controlled generation of multiple alternatives. The results show that when the spoken input deviates from the predefined task grammar, a combination of weak a priori syntax rules in conjunction with full a posteriori parsing on a lattice of alternative word matches provides the most robust recognition performance.