System and method for using semantic and syntactic graphs for utterance classification

A system comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising:
• generating a semantic and syntactic graph associated with a first call type;
• converting the semantic and syntactic graph into a first finite state transducer;
• composing the first finite state transducer with a second finite state transducer to form a third finite state transducer, wherein the second finite state transducer comprises all possible n-grams, and wherein the third finite state transducer comprises a subset of the all-possible n-grams;
• extracting the subset of the all-possible n-grams as features from the third finite state transducer, to yield extracted n-grams;
• associating an utterance with a second call type based on the extracted n-grams, to yield a classified utterance, wherein the second call type is determined based on semantic and syntactic features in the extracted n-grams;
• and
• responding to a user in a natural language dialog based on the classified utterance.

A computer-readable storage device having instructions stored which, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations comprising:

• generating a semantic and syntactic graph associated with a first call type;
• converting the semantic and syntactic graph into a first finite state transducer;
• composing the first finite state transducer with a second finite state transducer to form a third finite state transducer, wherein the second finite state transducer comprises all possible n-grams, and wherein the third finite state transducer comprises a subset of the all-possible n-grams;
• extracting the subset of the all-possible n-grams as features from the third finite state transducer, to yield extracted n-grams;
• associating an utterance with a second call type based on the extracted n-grams, to yield a classified utterance, wherein the second call type is determined based on semantic and syntactic features in the extracted n-grams;
• and
• responding to a user in a natural language dialog based on the classified utterance.