NATURAL LANGUAGE UNDERSTANDING AND SPEECH RECOGNITION

Abstract

This chapter presents an introduction to natural language understanding (NLU) and speech recognition. NLU refers to computer understanding of human language, which includes spoken as well as typed communication. Most of the techniques developed for NLU over are largely concerned with syntax analysis of grammatically correct typed sentences. These techniques may not be useful in dealing with the nongrammatical nature of normal speech. This chapter focuses on speech understanding and the association of NLU techniques with speech recognition techniques needed to achieve speech understanding. Automatic speech recognition (ASR) as a field of research has proceeded on a parallel but separate track from NLU. For most of this time, ASR research has been preoccupied with translating acoustic information into computer commands or text without involving formal NLU techniques. It might appear reasonable for speech understanding to be achieved by acoustic phonetic analysis followed by NLU analysis.