Spoken document collections with high word-type/word-token ratios and heterogeneous audio continue to constitute a challenge for information retrieval. The experimental results reported in this paper demonstrate that syllable-based indexing features can outperform word-based indexing features on such a domain, and that syllable-based speech recognition language models can successfully be used t...

Spoken language interfaces can provide natural communication for many database retrieval tasks. The CMU ATIS system provides an example of accessing airline information using spoken natural language queries. However, a lot of training data is needed to develop a spoken language application. For example, we need training data to generate a language model that can be used by the recognizer to red...

In this paper we describe a robust algorithm for information extraction from spoken language data. Our probabilistic algorithm builds on results in language modeling, using classbased smoothing to produce state-of-the-art performance for a wide range of speech error rates. We show that our system performs well with sparse data, as well as with out-of-domain data.

Speech is the most natural means of communication among humans. It is also believed that spoken language processing will play a major role in establishing a universal interface between humans and machines. Most of the existing spoken language systems are rather primitive. For example, speech synthesizers for reading unrestrict text of any language is only producing machine-sounding speech. Auto...

This paper describes an application of state-of-the-art spoken language technology (OAA/Gemini/Nuance) to a new problem domain: engaging students in automated tutorial dialogues in order to evaluate and improve their performance in a training simulator.

The objective of this project is to develop a robust and high-performance speech recognitiotl system using a segment-based approach to phonetic recognition. The recognition system will eventually be integrated with natural language processing to achieve spoken lallguagc understanding. Developed a phonetic recognition front-end and achieved 77% and 71% classiilcatiou accuracy under speaker-depen...

Children all over the world successfully acquire two or more languages with appropriate input. Children who are born with typical hearing into households where a sign language is the home language (because one or both parents are Deaf signers; these children are known as Kodas) are no different – they can successfully acquire both a spoken language and a sign language and become bimodal bilingu...

Understanding the relationship between brain and cognition critically depends on data from brain-damaged patients since these provide major constraints on identifying the essential components of brain-behavior systems. Here we relate structural and functional fMRI data with behavioral data in 21 human patients with chronic left hemisphere (LH) lesions and a range of language impairments to inve...