Modeling Pronunciation Variation for Automatic Speech Recognition Rolduc, The Netherlands May 4-6, 1998

Automatic Generation of Multiple Pronunciations Based on Neural Networks and Language Statistics

Toshiaki Fukada, Takayoshi Yoshimura, Yoshinori Sagisaka

ATR Interpreting Telecommunications Research Laboratories, Kyoto, Japan

We propose a method for automatically generating a pronunciation dictionary based on a pronunciation neural network that can predict plausible pronunciations (alternative pronunciations) from the canonical pronunciation. This method can generate multiple forms of alternative pronunciations using the pronunciation network. For generating a sophisticated alternative pronunciation dictionary, two techniques are described: (1) alternative pronunciations with likelihoods and (2) alternative pronunciations for word boundary phonemes. Experimental results on spontaneous speech show that the automatically-derived pronunciation dictionaries give consistently higher recognition rates than a conventional dictionary.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Fukada, Toshiaki / Yoshimura, Takayoshi / Sagisaka, Yoshinori (1998): "Automatic generation of multiple pronunciations based on neural networks and language statistics", In MPV-1998, 41-46.