Mixed-initiative spoken dialogue systems today generally allow users to query with a fixed vocabulary and grammar that is determined prior to run-time. This paper presents a spoken dialogue interface enhanced with a dynamic vocabulary capability. One or more word classes can be made dynamic in the speech recognizer and natural language (NL) grammar so that a context-specific vocabulary subset c...

In the context of the THISL spoken document retrieval system, we present a hybrid approach to spoken query processing, which enables to increase recognition rates and to extract relevant information for the application. The query processing is distributed between grammar and language model, based on the assumption that a query can be decomposed in two relatively independent parts; the addressin...

The linguistic input a child receives in the first years of life is foundational for cognitive and language development. In a corpus analysis, the vocabulary in picture books was richer and more extensive than that found in child-directed and even adult-directed speech. The grammar and complexity of these communication media, measured by reading grade level, indicated that picture books average...

We demonstrate a new development environment1 for “Information State Update” dialogue systems which allows non-expert developers to produce complete spoken dialogue systems based only on a Business Process Model (BPM) describing their application (e.g. banking, cinema booking, shopping, restaurant information). The environment includes automatic generation of Grammatical Framework (GF) grammars...

We describe a Swedish version of CALL-SLT, a web-deployed CALL system that allows beginner/intermediate students to practise generative spoken language skills. Speech recognition is grammar-based, with language models derived, using the Regulus platform, from substantial domain-independent feature grammars. The paper focusses on the Swedish grammar resources, which were developed by generalisin...

In this paper, a semantic parser with support to ellipsis resolution in a Chinese spoken language dialogue system is proposed. The grammar and parsing strategy of this parser is designed to address the characteristics of spoken language and to support the ellipsis resolution. Namely, it parses the user utterance with a domain-specific semantic grammar based on a template-filling approach. Synta...

This paper presents a purely data-driven spoken language understanding (SLU) system. It consists of three major components, a speech recognizer, a semantic parser, and a dialog act decoder. A novel feature of the system is that the understanding components are trained directly from data without using explicit semantic grammar rules or fully-annotated corpus data. Despite this, the system is nev...

Charles Wayne presented overviews for both the Spoken Language and Written Language Programs. Under the Spoken Language Program, he emphasized the integration of speech and natural language technology into Spoken Language Systems. The need for common corpora and tasks, as well as systematic, objective performance evaluation, was stressed for both the Spoken and Written Language Programs. In the...

Grammar rules for Clausal Coordinate Ellipsis (CCE) are based nearly exclusively on linguistic judgments (intuitions). For German, the extent to which grammar rules based on this type of empirical evidence generate all and only CCE structures that populate text corpora, has only been explored with the TIGER treebank of written newspaper text. How well these rules fit spoken German is unknown. I...