Apparatus and method for spoken language understanding by using semantic role labeling

A method for training a spoken language dialog system that uses semantic role labeling, the method causing a computing device to perform steps comprising:

• providing an expert with a plurality of predicate/argument pairs, each predicate argument pair comprising a predicate verb and an argument which completes the predicate verb;
• selecting, via a processor of the computing device, ones of the predicate/argument pairs as intents;
• selecting, via the processor, ones of the arguments as named entities;
• designing mappings from the arguments to frame slots;
• generating at least one semantic role label for only head words of phrases in the predicate/argument pairs;
• and
• identifying a syntactic path between head words and their respective extracted predicate.

An apparatus comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• storage for storing data and a plurality of instructions for the processor, wherein the apparatus is configured to execute the plurality of instructions to control the processor to:
• semantically parse a received utterance by semantic role labeling to generate at least one semantic role label for only head words of phrases in the received utterance;
• extract a predicate from the semantically parsed utterance,
• identify a syntactic path between head words and their respective extracted predicate, and
• estimate an intent based on the extracted predicate and based on predicate/argument pairs, each predicate argument pair comprising a predicate verb and an argument which completes the predicate verb.

An apparatus comprising:

• a processor;
• means for semantically parsing, via the processor, a received utterance by semantic role labeling to generate at least one semantic role label for only head words of phrases in the received utterance;
• means for extracting a predicate from the semantically parsed utterance;
• means for identifying a syntactic path between head words and their respective extracted predicate
• means for estimating an intent based the extracted predicate and based on predicate/argument pairs, each predicate argument pair comprising a predicate verb and an argument which completes the predicate verb;
• and
• means for responding to the received utterance based on the estimated intent.