RI: SMALL: LexE: Using Two-part Lexical Entrainment for More Efficient and Reliable Spoken Dialogue Systems

当人类相互交谈并希望对话顺利进行时，他们会相互适应。的说话方式，使用相同的单词，语法结构和表达。为了从根本上改善口语对话系统的性能，LexE正在使用微妙的技术来模拟这种适应，这被称为词汇夹带。LexE是让用户适应他们的语音系统，以及获得系统？的语音来适应用户所说的话。为了做到这一点，LexE研究人与人之间的对话，以找到单词和结构（the？素数？）这是对话参与者经常采用的方法。然后，口语对话系统在其输出中使用这些启动。该系统还检测其用户用来指代对象的表达，并在其合成语音中使用它们。两个真实用户口语对话系统被用作LexE的测试平台。第一个是阿勒格尼县港务局的公共汽车信息系统;第二个是匹兹堡市311非紧急服务。通过使这些公开的口语对话系统更容易使用，LexE使它们（和其他口语对话系统）更容易为我们的大部分人口所用，其中许多人，例如老年人，通过电话获得他们的大部分信息。该项目开发的技术还为非母语人士的教育和言语治疗提供了见解，其中辅导系统可以模仿人类隐含纠正对话者所说的错误的方式。

When humans speak to each other and want the dialogue to go well, they adapt to each other?s manner of speaking, using the same words, grammatical constructions and expressions. In order to make fundamental improvements in the performance of spoken dialogue systems, LexE is using subtle techniques to model this adaptation, which is called lexical entrainment. LexE is getting users to adapt their speech to the system, as well as getting the system?s speech to adapt to what the user says. To do this, LexE studies human-human dialogues to find the words and constructions (the ?primes?) that are often adopted by dialogue participants. The spoken dialogue system then uses these primes in its output. The system also detects the expressions that its user employs to refer to objects uses them in its synthetic speech. Two real-user spoken dialogue systems are being used as test platforms for LexE. The first is a bus information system for the Port Authority of Allegheny County; the second is the City of Pittsburgh 311 non-emergency service. By making these publicly-available spoken dialogue systems easier to use, LexE makes them (and other spoken dialogue systems) more accessible to a large part of our population, many of whom, the elderly, for example, get much of their information over the telephone. The techniques developed in this project also provide insights for the education of non-native speakers and for speech therapy, where tutoring systems can imitate the way humans implicitly correct errors in what their interlocutors say.