Adaptive language models for spoken dialogue systems

In this paper, we investigate both generative and statistical approaches for language modeling in spoken dialogue systems. Semantic class-based finite state and n-gram grammars are used for improving coverage and modeling accuracy when little training data is available. We have implemented dialogue-state specific language model adaptation to reduce perplexity and improve the efficiency of grammars for spoken dialogue systems. A novel algorithm for combining state-independent n-gram and state-dependent finite state grammars using acoustic confidence scores is proposed. Using this combination strategy, a relative word error reduction of 12% is achieved for certain dialogue states within a travel reservation task. Finally, semantic class multigrams are proposed and briefly evaluated for language modeling in dialogue systems.