Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Umut Ozertem

Sarangarajan Parthasarathy

Karthik Raghunathan

Michael Levit

Nicholas Kibre

Ziad Al Bawab

Issac Alphonso

Padma Varadharajan

Benoit F Dumoulin

Rosie Jones

Milad Shokouhi

Nick Craswell

Ali Ahmadi

Methods and systems are provided for providing alternative query suggestions. For example, a spoken natural language expression may be received and converted to a textual query by a speech recognition component. The spoken natural language expression may include one or more words, terms, and/or phrases. A phonetically confusable segment of the textual query may be identified by a classifier component. The classifier component may determine at least one alternative query based on identifying at least the phonetically confusable segment of the textual query. The classifier may further determine whether to suggest the at least one alternative query based on whether the at least one alternative query is sensical and/or useful. When it is determined to suggest the at least one alternative query, the at least one alternative query may be provided to and displayed on a user interface display.

Interactive reformulation of speech queries

A new pronunciation learning system for dynamically learning new pronunciations assisted by user correction logs. The user correction logs provide a record of speech recognition events and subsequent user behavior that implicitly confirms or rejects the recognition result and/or shows the user's intended words by via subsequent input. The system analyzes the correction logs and distills them down to a set of words which lack acceptable pronunciations. Hypothetical pronunciations, constrained by spelling and other linguistic knowledge, are generated for each of the words. Offline recognition determines the hypothetical pronunciations with a good acoustical match to the audio data likely to contain the words. The matching pronunciations are aggregated and adjudicated to select new pronunciations for the words to improve general or personalized recognition models.

Pronunciation learning through correction logs

Examples of the present disclosure describe generation of a multi-arc confusion network to improve, for example, an ability to return alternatives to output generated. A confusion network comprising token representations of lexicalized hypotheses and normalized hypotheses is generated. Each arc of the confusion network represents a token of a lexicalized hypothesis or a normalized hypothesis. The confusion network is transformed into a multi-arc confusion network, wherein the transforming comprising realigning at least one token of the confusion network to span multiple arcs of the confusion network. Other examples are also described.

Transcription correction using multi-token structures

Growing community of inventors

San Carlos, CA, United States of America

Umut Ozertem