Google Inc.

Nuance Communications, Inc.

Eric G Jackson

Amit Singhal

Paul A Tucker

Michael H Cohen

Alexander Mark Franz

Brian Christopher Milch

Benjamin Jay Diament

Jenny Zhou

Eric I Chao Chang

Vijaya L Kurada

Methods and systems for efficient query rewriting and the like are described here. One such described method comprises: offline mapping frequently-seen search queries to rewritten queries that may be better for searching; offline caching the mapping in a cache memory; and upon receiving a search query from a user similar to one of the mapped search queries, obtaining a corresponding rewritten query from the mapping in the cache memory based on predetermined conditions, and issuing a search of the rewritten query to the backend data system in order to avoid having to issue a search query to the backend data system twice while the user is online.

Methods and systems for efficient query rewriting

Efficient query rewriting

A system and method for identifying language attributes through probabilistic analysis is described. A set of language classes and a plurality of training documents are defined, Each language class identifies a language and a character set encoding. Occurrences of one or more document properties within each training document are evaluated. For each language class, a probability for the document properties set conditioned on the occurrence of the language class is calculated. Byte occurrences within each training document are evaluated. For each language class, a probability for the byte occurrences conditioned on the occurrence of the language class is calculated.

Identifying language attributes through probabilistic analysis

A computerized method for building and running natural language understanding systems, wherein a natural language understanding system takes a sentence as input and returns some representation of the possible meanings of the sentence as output (the &ldquo;interpretation&rdquo;) using a run-time interpreter th assigns interpretations to sentences and a compiler that produces (in a computer memory) an internal specification needed for the run-time interpreter from a user specification of the semantics of the application. The compiler builds a natural language system, while the run-time interpreter runs the system.

Method and system for building and running natural language understanding systems

A stream of input speech is coupled as an input to a speech recognizer. The speech can be provided to the speech recognizer directly from a user or first stored and provided from a memory circuit. Each input word is recognized by the speech recognizer and a word confidence score is associated with each corresponding recognized word. The recognized words and their associated word confidence scores are provided to a natural language interpreter which parses the stream of recognized words into predetermined edges. From the edges, the natural language interpreter forms semantic slots which represent a semantic meaning. A slot confidence score related to the word or phone confidence scores for each of the words in the slot is determined for each slot. Based upon the slot confidence score, an ancillary application program determines whether to accept the words used to fill each slot. If the slot is rejected, the application program can request the user to repeat the information necessary to fill that slot only, rather than requiring the user to repeat the entire stream of input speech.

Natural language speech recognition using slot semantic confidence scores related to their word recognition confidence scores

A computerized method for building and running natural language understanding systems, wherein a natural language understanding system takes a sentence as input and returns some representation of the possible meanings of the sentence as output (the &ldquo;interpretation&rdquo;) using a run-time interpreter that assigns interpretations to sentences and a compiler that produces (in a computer memory) an internal specification needed for the run-time interpreter from a user specification of the semantics of the application. The compiler builds a natural language system, while the run-time interpreter runs the system.

A method and apparatus are used for analyzing dialogs in an interactive natural language speech recognition system. As a telephone call is received in the interactive natural language speech recognition system, user utterances are digitized and stored. A data log is formed which stores the prompt played, the dialog state, the address location of the audio recording of the user's responses, the recognition grammar, the recognition result type, the recognized word string, the understood meaning/interpretation, and the recognition latency. The telephone call can be virtually reconstructed from the stored user utterances and the data log. An automatic data analysis tool provides information regarding the relative success and failure of the various dialogs as an aid to modifying the dialogs to improve system performance.

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Menlo Park, CA, United States of America

Eric G Jackson