The MERL SpokenQuery information retrieval system a system for retrieving pertinent documents from a spoken query

This paper describes some key concepts developed and used in the design of a spoken-query based information retrieval system developed at the Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL). Innovations in the system include automatic inclusion of signature terms of documents in the recognizer´s vocabulary, the use of uncertainty vectors to represent spoken queries, and a method of indexing that accommodates the usage of uncertainty vectors. This paper describes these techniques and includes experimental results that demonstrate their effectiveness.