Hierarchical speech recognition decoder

A computer-implemented method, comprising:

• accessing a literal speech recognition corpus comprising a plurality of expressions, an expression comprising a sequence of word tokens;
• accessing a concept tagging module for identifying instances of a plurality of concepts within an expression and for replacing expressions with placeholders that indicate classes associated with concepts;
• generating a parameterized speech recognition corpus by using the concept tagging module to identify, within the expressions of the literal speech recognition corpus, portions of the expressions that are instances of the concepts and to replace the identified portions of the expressions with placeholders;
• and
• generating a parameterized statistical model based on the parameterized speech recognition corpus
• receiving, over a computer network, an utterance of a user, the utterance having been accepted from the user at a client device as spoken input;
• and
• generating a text interpretation of the utterance using the parameterized statistical model together with a language sub-model corresponding to one of the plurality of concepts.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions executable by a computer processor, the instructions comprising:

• instructions for accessing a literal speech recognition corpus comprising a plurality of expressions, an expression comprising a sequence of word tokens;
• instructions for accessing a concept tagging module for identifying instances of a plurality of concepts within an expression and for replacing expressions with placeholders that indicate classes associated with concepts;
• instructions for generating a parameterized speech recognition corpus by using the concept tagging module to identify, within the expressions of the literal speech recognition corpus, portions of the expressions that are instances of the concepts and to replace the identified portions of the expressions with placeholders;
• and
• instructions for generating a parameterized statistical model based on the parameterized speech recognition corpus
• instructions for receiving, over a computer network, an utterance of a user, the utterance having been accepted from the user at a client device as spoken input;
• and
• instructions for generating a text interpretation of the utterance using the parameterized statistical model together with a language sub-model corresponding to one of the plurality of concepts.