Method and apparatus for training a multilingual speech model set

Patent 6912499 Issued on June 28, 2005. Estimated Expiration Date:

August 31, 2019. Estimated Expiration Date is calculated based on simple USPTO term provisions. It does not account for terminal disclaimers, term adjustments, failure to pay maintenance fees, or other factors which might affect the term of a patent.

Abstract Claims Description Full Text

Patent References

Apparatus and method of grouping utterances of a phoneme into context-dependent categories based on sound-similarity for automatic speech recognition
Patent #: 5195167
Issued on: 03/16/1993
Inventor: Bahl, et al.

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Issued on: 03/26/1996
Inventor: Yi

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Patent #: 6085160
Issued on: 07/04/2000
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Issued on: 09/18/2001
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Inventors

Application

No. 09386282 filed on 08/31/1999

US Classes:

704/243, Creating patterns for matching704/255, Specialized models704/8, Multilingual or national language support704/256, Markov704/257Natural language

Examiners

Primary: Azad, Abul K.

International Classes

G10L015/06
G10L015/14

Abstract

The invention relates to a method and apparatus for training a multilingual speech model set. The multilingual speech model set generated is suitable for use by a speech recognition system for recognizing spoken utterances for at least two different languages. The invention allows using a single speech recognition unit with a single speech model set to perform speech recognition on utterances from two or more languages. The method and apparatus make use of a group of a group of acoustic sub-word units comprised of a first subgroup of acoustic sub-word units associated to a first language and a second subgroup of acoustic sub-word units associated to a second language where the first subgroup and the second subgroup share at least one common acoustic sub-word unit. The method and apparatus also make use of a plurality of letter to acoustic sub-word unit rules sets, each letter to acoustic sub-word unit rules set being associated to a different language. A set of untrained speech models is trained on the basis of a training set comprising speech tokens and their associated labels in combination with the group of acoustic sub-word units and the plurality of letter to acoustic sub-word unit rules sets. The invention also provides a computer readable storage medium comprising a program element for implementing the method for training a multilingual speech model set.