Word verification in the Hearsay II speech understanding system

A key problem for speech understanding systems is the verification of word hypotheses generated by various knowledge sources in the system. In this paper we will discuss the general problem of word verification in speech understanding systems. A description of our matching algorithm for word verification which is based on that used in the HARPY system, a general connected speech recognition system (Lowerre, 1976), is given. An example of the verification of a word hypothesis using this algorithm is presented. Problems which arose in applying this technique to verification of individual words in a connected speech understanding system and their solutions are discussed. A performance analysis of the verifier in terms of accuracy and speed is given and directions for future work are indicated.