Survey of the State of the Art in Human Language Technology

502 Pages·2.492 MB·

by  Cole R.A. etc. (eds.)

Survey of the State of the Art
in Human Language Technology
Editorial Board:
Ronald A.Cole, Editorin Chief
JosephMariani
Hans Uszkoreit
Annie Zaenen
Victor Zue
Managing Editors:
GiovanniVarile
AntonioZampolli
Sponsors:
NationalScience Foundation
Directorate XIII-E of the Commissionof the European Communities
Center for Spoken LanguageUnderstanding,OregonGraduate Institute
Contents
1 Spoken Language Input 1
RonCole&VictorZue,chaptereditors
1.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
VictorZue&RonCole
1.2 SpeechRecognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
VictorZue,RonCole,&WayneWard
1.3 SignalRepresentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
MelvynJ.Hunt
1.4 RobustSpeechRecognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
RichardM.Stern
1.5 HMMMethodsinSpeechRecognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
RenatoDeMori&FabioBrugnara
1.6 LanguageRepresentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
SalimRoukos
1.7 SpeakerRecognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
SadaokiFurui
1.8 SpokenLanguageUnderstanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
PattiPrice
1.9 ChapterReferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2 Written Language Input 59
JosephMariani,chaptereditor
2.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
SargurN.Srihari&RohiniK.Srihari
2.2 DocumentImageAnalysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
RichardG.Casey
2.3 OCR:Print . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
AbdelBela¨ıd
2.4 OCR:Handwriting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
ClaudieFaure&EricLecolinet
v
vi CONTENTS
2.5 HandwritingasComputerInterface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
IsabelleGuyon&ColinWarwick
2.6 HandwritingAnalysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
RejeanPlamondon
2.7 ChapterReferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3 Language Analysis and Understanding 89
AnnieZaenen,chaptereditor
3.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
AnnieZaenen&HansUszkoreit
3.2 Sub-SententialProcessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
FredKarlsson&LauriKarttunen
3.3 GrammarFormalisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
HansUszkoreit&AnnieZaenen
3.4 LexiconsforConstraint-BasedGrammars . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
AntonioSanfilippo
3.5 Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
StephenG.Pulman
3.6 SentenceModelingandParsing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
FernandoPereira
3.7 RobustParsing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
TedBriscoe
3.8 ChapterReferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
4 Language Generation 131
HansUszkoreit,chaptereditor
4.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
EduardHovy
4.2 SyntacticGeneration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
GertjanvanNoord&Gu¨nterNeumann
4.3 DeepGeneration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
JohnBateman
4.4 ChapterReferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
5 Spoken Output Technologies 155
RonCole,chaptereditor
5.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
YoshinoriSagisaka
5.2 SyntheticSpeechGeneration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Christophed’Alessandro&Jean-SylvainLie´nard
5.3 TextInterpretationforTtSSynthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
RichardSproat
CONTENTS vii
5.4 SpokenLanguageGeneration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
KathleenR.McKeown&JohannaD.Moore
5.5 ChapterReferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
6 Discourse and Dialogue 187
HansUszkoreit,chaptereditor
6.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
BarbaraGrosz
6.2 DiscourseModeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
DoniaScott&HansKamp
6.3 DialogueModeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
PhilCohen
6.4 SpokenLanguageDialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
EgidioGiachin
6.5 ChapterReferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
7 Document Processing 209
AnnieZaenen,chaptereditor
7.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Per-KristianHalvorsen
7.2 DocumentRetrieval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
DonnaHarman,PeterScha¨uble,&AlanSmeaton
7.3 TextInterpretation:ExtractingInformation . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
PaulJacobs
7.4 Summarization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
KarenSparckJones
7.5 ComputerAssistanceinTextCreationandEditing . . . . . . . . . 220
RobertDale
7.6 ControlledLanguagesinIndustry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
RichardH.Wojcik&JamesE.Hoard
7.7 ChapterReferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
8 Multilinguality 229
AnnieZaenen,chaptereditor
8.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
MartinKay
8.2 MachineTranslation:TheDisappointingPastandPresent . . . . 232
MartinKay
8.3 (Human-Aided)MachineTranslation:ABetterFuture? . . . . . . 234
ChristianBoitet
8.4 Machine-aidedHumanTranslation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
ChristianBoitet
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8.5 MultilingualInformationRetrieval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
ChristianFluhr
8.6 MultilingualSpeechProcessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
AlexanderWaibel
8.7 AutomaticLanguageIdentification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
YeshwantK.Muthusamy&A.LawrenceSpitz
8.8 ChapterReferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
9 Multimodality 267
JosephMariani,chaptereditor
9.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
JamesL.Flanagan
9.2 RepresentationsofSpaceandTime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Ge´rardLigozat
9.3 TextandImages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
WolfgangWahlster
9.4 ModalityIntegration:SpeechandGesture . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
YacineBellik
9.5 ModalityIntegration:FacialMovement&SpeechRecognition . . 287
AlanJ.Goldschen
9.6 ModalityIntegration:FacialMovement&SpeechSynthesis . . . 290
ChristianBenoit,DominicW.Massaro,&MichaelM.Cohen
9.7 ChapterReferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
10 Transmission and Storage 301
VictorZue,chaptereditor
10.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
IsabelTrancoso
10.2 SpeechCoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
BishnuS.Atal&NikilS.Jayant
10.3 SpeechEnhancement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
DirkVanCompernolle
10.4 ChapterReferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
11 Mathematical Methods 315
RonCole,chaptereditor
11.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
HansUszkoreit
11.2 StatisticalModelingandClassification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
SteveLevinson
11.3 DSPTechniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
JohnMakhoul
CONTENTS ix
11.4 ParsingTechniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
AravindJoshi
11.5 ConnectionistTechniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Herve´Bourlard&NelsonMorgan
11.6 FiniteStateTechnology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
RonaldM.Kaplan
11.7 OptimizationandSearchinSpeechandLanguageProcessing . . . 341
JohnBridle
11.8 ChapterReferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
12 Language Resources 357
RonCole,chaptereditor
12.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
JohnJ.Godfrey&AntonioZampolli
12.2 WrittenLanguageCorpora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
EvaEjerhed&KenChurch
12.3 SpokenLanguageCorpora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
LoriLamel&RonaldCole
12.4 Lexicons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
RalphGrishman&NicolettaCalzolari
12.5 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
ChristianGalinski&GerhardBudin
12.6 AddressesforLanguageResources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
12.7 ChapterReferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
13 Evaluation 385
JosephMariani,chaptereditor
13.1 OverviewofEvaluationinSpeechandNaturalLanguageProcessing385
LynetteHirschman&HenryS.Thompson
13.2 Task-OrientedTextAnalysisEvaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
BethSundheim
13.3 EvaluationofMachineTranslationandTranslationTools . . . . . 394
JohnHutchins
13.4 EvaluationofBroad-CoverageNatural-LanguageParsers . . . . . 395
EzraBlack
13.5 HumanFactorsandUserAcceptability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
MargaretKing
13.6 SpeechInput: AssessmentandEvaluation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
DavidS.Pallett&AdrianFourcin
13.7 SpeechSynthesisEvaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
LouisC.W.Pols
13.8 UsabilityandInterfaceDesign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
SharonOviatt
x CONTENTS
13.9 SpeechCommunicationQuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
HermanJ.M.Steeneken
13.10 CharacterRecognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
JunichiKanai
13.11 ChapterReferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
Glossary 421
CitationIndex 427
Index 448
Forewords
Foreword by the Editor in Chief
The field of human language technology covers a broad range of activities with the
eventualgoalofenablingpeopletocommunicatewithmachinesusingnaturalcommu-
nicationskills. Research and developmentactivities includethe coding, recognition,
interpretation,translation,andgenerationoflanguage.
Thestudyofhumanlanguagetechnologyisamultidisciplinaryenterprise,requir-
ing expertise in areas of linguistics, psychology, engineering and computer science.
Creating machinesthat will interact with peoplein a gracefuland naturalway using
languagerequiresadeepunderstandingoftheacousticandsymbolicstructureoflan-
guage(thedomainoflinguistics),andthemechanismsandstrategiesthatpeopleuseto
communicatewitheachother(thedomainofpsychology).Giventheremarkableabil-
ityofpeopletoconverseunderadverseconditions,suchasnoisysocialgatheringsor
band-limitedcommunicationchannels, advancesin signal processingare essential to
producerobustsystems(thedomainofelectricalengineering). Advancesincomputer
science are needed to create the architectures and platforms needed to represent and
utilizeallofthisknowledge.Collaborationamongresearchersineachoftheseareasis
neededtocreatemultimodalandmultimediasystemsthatcombinespeech,facialcues
andgesturesbothtoimprovelanguageunderstandingandtoproducemorenaturaland
intelligiblespeechbyanimatedcharacters.
Human language technologies play a key role in the age of information. Today,
thebenefitsofinformationandservicesoncomputernetworksareunavailabletothose
withoutaccess to computersor the skills to use them. As the importanceof interac-
tivenetworksincreases incommerceanddailylife, those whodonot haveaccess to
computersortheskillstousethemarefurtherhandicappedfrombecomingproductive
membersofsociety.
Advancesinhumanlanguagetechnologyofferthepromiseofnearlyuniversalac-
cess to on-line information and services. Since almost everyone speaks and under-
standsalanguage,thedevelopmentofspokenlanguagesystemswillallowtheaverage
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xii
persontointeractwithcomputerswithoutspecialskillsortraining,usingcommonde-
vicessuchasthetelephone.Thesesystemswillcombinespokenlanguageunderstand-
ingandgenerationtoallowpeopletointeractwithcomputersusingspeechto obtain
informationonvirtuallyanytopic,toconductbusinessandtocommunicatewitheach
othermoreeffectively.
Advancesintheprocessingofspeech,textandimagesareneededtomakesenseof
themassiveamountsofinformationnowavailableviacomputernetworks.Astudent’s
query: “Tellmeaboutglobalwarming,”shouldsetinmotionasetofproceduresthat
locate, organizeandsummarizeall availableinformationaboutglobalwarmingfrom
books,periodicals,newscasts,satelliteimagesandothersources.Translationofspeech
or text from one language to another is needed to access and interpret all available
materialandpresentittothestudentinhernativelanguage.
Thisbooksurveysthestateoftheartofhumanlanguagetechnology. Thegoalof
thesurveyis toprovideaninterestedreaderwith anoverviewof thefield—themain
areasofwork,thecapabilitiesandlimitationsofcurrenttechnology,andthetechnical
challenges that must be overcome to realize the vision of graceful human computer
interactionusingnaturalcommunicationskills.
Thebookconsistsofthirteenchapterswrittenby97differentauthors. Inorderto
createacoherentandreadablevolume,agreatdealofeffortwasexpendedtoprovide
consistentstructureandlevelofpresentationwithinandacrosschapters. Theeditorial
boardmetsixtimesoveratwo-yearperiod.Duringthefirsttwomeetings,thestructure
ofthesurveywasdefined,includingtopics,authors,andguidelinestoauthors.During
eachofthefinalfourmeetings(infourdifferentcountries),eachauthor’scontribution
wascarefullyreviewedandrevisionswererequested,withtheaimofmakingthesurvey
asinclusive,up-to-dateandinternallyconsistentaspossible.
Thisbookisduetotheeffortsofmanypeople. Thesurveywasthebrainchildof
OscarGarcia(thenprogramdirectorattheNationalScienceFoundationintheUnited
States), and AntonioZampolli, professorat the Universityof Pisa, Italy. Oscar Gar-
ciaandMarkLibermanhelpedorganizethesurveyandparticipatedintheselectionof
topicsandauthors;theirinsightsandcontributionstothesurveyaregratefullyacknowl-
edged. Ithankallofmycolleaguesontheeditorialboard,whodedicatedremarkable
amountsoftimeandefforttothesurvey. IamparticularlygratefultoJosephMariani
forhisdiligenceandsupportduringthepasttwoyears,andtoVictorZueforhishelp
andguidancethroughoutthis project. I thankHans Uszkoreit andAntonioZampolli
for their help in finding publishers. The survey owes much to the efforts of Vince
Weatherill,theproductioneditor,whoworkedwiththeeditorialboardandtheauthors
toputthesurveytogether,andtoDonColton,whoindexedthebookseveraltimesand
copyeditedmuchofit.Finally,onbehalfoftheeditorialboard,wethanktheauthorsof
thissurvey,whosetalentsandpatiencewereresponsibleforthequalityofthisproduct.
ThesurveywassupportedbyagrantfromtheNationalScienceFoundationtoRon
Cole,VictorZueandMarkLiberman,andbytheEuropeanCommission. Additional
supportwasprovidedbytheCenterforSpokenLanguageUnderstandingattheOregon
GraduateInstituteandtheUniversityofPisa,Italy.
RonCole
PoipuBeach
xiii
Kauii,Hawaii,USA
January31,1996