A model and a system for machine recognition of speech

This paper presents a model for machine recognition of connected speech and the details of a specific implementation of the model, the HEARSAY system. The model consists of a small set of cooperating independent parallel processes that are capable of helping in the decoding of a spoken utterance either individually or collectively. The processes use the "hypothesize-and-test" paradigm. The structure of HEARSAY is illustrated by considering its operation in a particular task situation: voice-chess. The task is to recognize a spoken move in a given board position. Procedures for determination of parameters, segmentation, and phonetic descriptions are outlined. The use of semantic, syntactic, lexical, and phonological sources of knowledge in the generation and verification of hypotheses is described. Preliminary results of recognition of some utterances are given.