Strategies for Speech Recognition and Understanding using Layered Protocols

Abstract

The theory of Layered Protocols, developed for more general description of intelligent communication and design of human-computer interfaces, is proposed as a framework for integrating syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic information of various types in a speech understanding system. A 9-element protocol structure is described, and the interaction of protocols in a processing network is suggested as a mechanism for understanding acoustic messages. Hidden Markov Models are a special case of the proposed structure.