Method of assessing degree of acoustic confusability, and system therefor

A process comprising:

• representing text phrases with corresponding strings of phonemes;
• calculating an acoustic confusability measure as a least cost to transform one of the strings of phonemes into another of the strings of phonemes;
• determining and adjusting, using a speech recognizer, a threshold value according to confusability of example pairs of spoken phrases represented as audio files;
• and
• comparing the least cost to the threshold value to determine acoustic confusability of the text phrases when spoken to a speech recognizer.

A process, comprising:

• representing text phrases with corresponding strings of phonemes;
• calculating a distance between the strings of phonemes using a string edit distance algorithm as a least cost to transform according to a series of transformations one of the strings of phonemes into another of the strings of phonemes;
• determining and adjusting, using a speech recognizer, a threshold value according to confusability of example pairs of spoken phrases represented as audio files;
• and
• comparing the least cost to the threshold value to predict when a speech recognizer will confuse spoken phrases of the text phrases.

A computer system, comprising:

• a processor programmed to control the computer system according to a process comprising:
• representing each text form of two spoken phrases with a first and second strings of phonemes, respectively,
• assigning costs to transform the first string to the second string of phonemes according to a speech recognizer confusability of arbitrary pairs of audio files, and
• calculating an acoustic confusability measure as a least cost, according to the cost assigning, to transform the first string of phonemes to the second string of phonemes, thereby predicting when a speech recognizer will confuse two spoken phrases by directly using text representations of the spoken phrases.

A process of predicting when a speech recognizer will confuse two spoken phrases where two utterances corresponding to the spoken phrases in any combination of text and audio file are available to a confusability prediction algorithm, comprising:

• representing each utterance with corresponding sequences of acoustic characteristics based on phonetic capabilities of speakers obtained from acoustic signals of the utterances;
• aligning the sequences of acoustic characteristics;
• comparing the sequences of acoustic characteristics;
• and
• calculating a metric of acoustic confusability according to a formula 2K/(T), wherein K is a number of acoustic characteristics that match from the comparing and T is a total number of acoustic characteristics in the sequences of acoustic characteristics for both utterances.

A process comprising:

• representing two utterances that are in any combination of a text form and an audio file with corresponding sequences of acoustic characteristics based on phonetic capabilities of speakers obtained from acoustic signals of the utterances;
• aligning the sequences of acoustic characteristics;
• comparing the sequences of acoustic characteristics;
• and
• calculating a metric of acoustic confusability according to the comparing.

A process comprising:

• representing two utterances with corresponding sequences of acoustic characteristics based on phonetic capabilities of speakers obtained from acoustic signals of the utterances;
• aligning the sequences of acoustic characteristics;
• comparing the sequences of acoustic characteristics;
• and
• calculating a metric of acoustic confusability according to a formula 2K/(T), wherein K is a number of acoustic characteristics that match from the comparing and T is a total number of acoustic characteristics in the sequences of acoustic characteristics for both utterances.

A process, comprising:

• representing a first phrase and a second phrase, respectively, with a corresponding sequence of acoustic features and acoustic measures obtained from a dictionary of acoustic features and a database of prerecorded audio files;
• aligning the sequence of acoustic features and acoustic measures of the first phrase with the sequence of acoustic features and acoustic measures of the second phrase;
• comparing the aligned first phrase and second phrase sequences;
• and
• calculating a metric of acoustic confusability according to the comparing according to a formula 2K/(N+M), wherein K is a number of acoustic features and acoustic measures that match from the comparing and N is a number of acoustic features and acoustic measures in the first phrase and M is a number of acoustic features and acoustic measures in the second phrase.

A computer system, comprising:

• a processor programmed to predict when a speech recognizer will confuse two spoken phrases where two phrases in any combination of text and spoken form are available to a confusability prediction algorithm, according to a process comprising:
• representing each phrase with corresponding sequences of acoustic characteristics based on phonetic capabilities of speakers obtained from acoustic signals of the phrases;
• aligning the sequences of acoustic characteristics;
• comparing the sequences of acoustic characteristics;
• and
• calculating a metric of acoustic confusability according to a formula 2K/(T), wherein K is a number of acoustic characteristics that match from the comparing and T is a total number of acoustic characteristics in the sequences of acoustic characteristics for both phrases.

A process, comprising:

• receiving two utterances in any combination of a text form and an audio file, the audio file having a speech signal recorded by any speaker and under any acoustic condition;
• representing the two utterances with an intermediate representation that directly reflects the salient acoustic characteristics of the two utterances when spoken;
• and
• predicting when a speech recognizer will confuse the two utterances when spoken by using the intermediate representation of the two utterances.

A computer program, embodied on a computer-readable medium, comprising:

• an input segment receiving two utterances in any combination of a text form and an audio file, the audio file having speech signals recorded by any speaker and under any acoustic condition;
• a transformation segment representing the two utterances with an intermediate representation that directly reflects the salient acoustic characteristics of the two utterances when spoken;
• and
• a predicting segment predicting acoustic confusability of the two utterances when spoken to a speech recognizer using the intermediate representation of the two utterances.