US 6,078,885 A · Verbal, fully automatic dictionary updates by end-users of speech synthesis and recognition systems

Abstract

A method and system that allows users, or maintainers, of a speech-based application to revise the phonetic transcription of words in a phonetic dictionary, or to add transcriptions for words not yet present in the dictionary. The application is assumed to communicate with the user or maintainer audibly by means of speech recognition and/or speech synthesis systems, both of which rely on a dictionary of phonetic transcriptions to accurately recognize speech and pronunciation of a given word. The method automatically determines the phonetic transcription based on the word's spelling and the recorded preferred pronunciation, and updates the dictionary accordingly. Moreover, both speech synthesis and recognition performance are improved through use of the updated dictionary.

Claims24

Dependent claims

A method of allowing an end-user of a text-to-speech system or a speech recognition system to verbally update a phonetic dictionary, comprising the steps of:

recording a verbal pronunciation of at least one word, as spoken by the user;
generating a phonetic transcription of the at least one word based on the verbal pronunciation;
augmenting the phonetic transcription with syllable stress markers based on the verbal pronunciation;
and
entering the phonetic transcription into the dictionary.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Verbal, fully automatic dictionary updates by end-users of speech synthesis and recognition systems

Life of this patent

Verbal, fully automatic dictionary updates by end-users of speech synthesis and recognition systems

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims24