Efficient Incremental Modification of Optimized Finite-State Transducers (FSTs) for Use in Speech Applications

Abstract

Methods of incrementally modifying a word-level finite state transducer (FST) are described for adding and removing sentences. A prefix subset of states and arcs in the FST is determined that matches a prefix portion of the sentence. A suffix subset of states and arcs in the FST is determined that matches a suffix portion of the sentence. A new sentence can then be added to the FST by appending a new sequence of states and arcs to the FST corresponding to a remainder of the sentence between the prefix and suffix. An existing sentence can be removed from the FST by removing any arcs and states between the prefix subset and the suffix subset. The resulting modified FST is locally efficient but does not satisfy global optimization criteria such as minimization.

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