Spoken language understanding within dialogs using a graphical model of task structure
Jeremy H. Wright, Allen L. Gorin, Alicia Abella · 1998
We describe a procedure for contextual interpretation of spoken sentences within dialogs. Task structure is represented in a graphical form, enabling the interpreter algorithm to be efficient and task-independent. Recognized spoken input may consist either of a single sentence with utterance-verification scores, or of a word lattice with arc weights. A confidence model is used throughout and all inferences are probability-weighted. The interpretation consists of a probability for each class and for each auxiliary information label needed for task completion. Anaphoric references are permitted. 1. INTRODUCTION We are interested in spoken dialog systems in which the caller responds using fluent natural language to the prompt "How may I help you?" (HMIHY). In previous work we have described the speech recognizer [1], automatic acquisition of salient phrase and grammar fragments, and call-type classification [2,3], the dialog manager [4], and the incorporation of utterance verification [...