System And Method For Word-sense Disambiguation By Recursive Partitioning - Patent 8099281

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System And Method For Word-sense Disambiguation By Recursive Partitioning - Patent 8099281 Powered By Docstoc
Description: The present invention is related to the field of pattern analysis, and more particularly, to pattern analysis involving the conversion text data to synthetic speech.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Numerous advances, both with respect to hardware and software, have been made in recent years relating to computer-based speech recognition and to the conversion of text into electronically generated synthetic speech. Thus, there now existcomputer-based systems in which data that is to be synthesized is stored as text in a binary format so that as needed the text can be electronically converted into speech in accordance with a text-to-speech conversion protocol. One advantage of this isthat it reduces the memory overhead that would otherwise be needed to store "digitized" speech. Notwithstanding these advances, however, one problem persists in transforming textual input into intelligible human speech, namely, the handling of homographs that are sometimes encountered in any textual input. A homograph comprises one ormore words that have identical spellings but different meanings and different pronunciations. For example, the word BASS has two different meanings--one pertaining to a type of fish and the other to a type of musical instrument. The word also has twodistinct pronunciations. Such a word obviously presents a problem for any text-to-speech engine that must predict the phonemes that correspond to the character string B-A-S-S. In some instances, the meaning and pronunciation may be dictated by the function that the homograph performs; that is, the part of speech to which the word corresponds. For example, the homograph CONTRACT, when it functions as a verb has onemeaning--and, accordingly, one pronunciation--and another meaning and corresponding pronunciation when it functions as a noun. Therefore, since nouns frequently precede predicates, knowing the order of appearance of the homograph in a word string maygive a clue as to its appropriate pronunciation. In o