Abstract: A method of providing a personal directory service includes receiving, over the Internet, from a user terminal, a query spoken by a user, where the query spoken by the user includes a speech utterance representing a category of persons. The method also includes determining a geographic location of the user terminal, recognizing the category of persons with the speech recognition engine based on the speech utterance representing the category of persons a listing of persons within or near the determined geographic location matching the query to select persons responsive to the query spoken by the user, and sending to the user terminal information related to at least some of the responsive persons.

Abstract: Systems, methods, and computer readable media related to information retrieval. Some implementations are related to training and/or using a relevance model for information retrieval. The relevance model includes an input neural network model and a subsequent content neural network model. The input neural network model and the subsequent content neural network model can be separate, but trained and/or used cooperatively. The input neural network model and the subsequent content neural network model can be “separate” in that separate inputs are applied to the neural network models, and each of the neural network models is used to generate its own feature vector based on its applied input. A comparison of the feature vectors generated based on the separate network models can then be performed, where the comparison indicates relevance of the input applied to the input neural network model to the separate input applied to the subsequent content neural network model.

Abstract: Systems, methods, and computer readable media related to determining one or more responses to provide that are responsive to an electronic communication that is generated through interaction with a client computing device. For example, determining one or more responses to provide for presentation to a user as suggestions for inclusion in a reply to an electronic communication sent to the user. Some implementations are related to training and/or using separate input and response neural network models for determining responses for electronic communications. The input neural network model and the response neural network model can be separate, but trained and/or used cooperatively.

Abstract: A method of searching a business listing with voice commands includes receiving, over the Internet, from a user terminal, a query spoken by a user, which includes a speech utterance representing a category of merchandize, a speech utterance representing a merchandize item, and a speech utterance representing a geographic location.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for determining pronunciations for particular terms. The methods, systems, and apparatus include actions of obtaining audio samples of speech corresponding to a particular term and obtaining candidate pronunciations for the particular term. Further actions include generating, for each candidate pronunciation for the particular term and audio sample of speech corresponding to the particular term, a score reflecting a level of similarity between of the candidate pronunciation and the audio sample, wherein the said score for the particular term is obtained by using a minimum of individual scores of phonemes comprising the term. Additional actions include aggregating the scores for each candidate pronunciation and adding one or more candidate pronunciations for the particular term to a pronunciation lexicon based on the aggregated scores for the candidate pronunciations.

Abstract: A method of operating a voice-enabled business directory search system includes receiving category-business pairs, each category-business pair including a business category and a specific business, and establishing a data structure having nodes based on the category-business pairs. Each node of the data structure is associated with one or more business categories and a speech recognition language model for recognizing specific businesses associated with the one or more businesses categories.

Abstract: A method of operating a voice-enabled business directory search system includes receiving category-business pairs, each category-business pair including a business category and a specific business, and establishing a data structure having nodes based on the category-business pairs. Each node of the data structure is associated with one or more business categories and a speech recognition language model for recognizing specific businesses associated with the one or more businesses categories.

Abstract: The subject matter of this specification can be embodied in, among other things, a method that includes receiving an audio signal and initiating speech recognition tasks by a plurality of speech recognition systems (SRS's). Each SRS is configured to generate a recognition result specifying possible speech included in the audio signal and a confidence value indicating a confidence in a correctness of the speech result. The method also includes completing a portion of the speech recognition tasks including generating one or more recognition results and one or more confidence values for the one or more recognition results, determining whether the one or more confidence values meets a confidence threshold, aborting a remaining portion of the speech recognition tasks for SRS's that have not generated a recognition result, and outputting a final recognition result based on at least one of the generated one or more speech results.

Abstract: Speech recognition systems may perform the following operations: receiving audio at a computing device; identifying a language associated with the audio; recognizing the audio using recognition models for different versions of the language to produce recognition candidates for the audio, where the recognition candidates are associated with corresponding information; comparing the information of the recognition candidates to identify agreement between at least two of the recognition models; selecting a recognition candidate based on information of the recognition candidate and agreement between the at least two of the recognition models; and outputting data corresponding to the selected recognition candidate as a recognized version of the audio.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for enhancing speech recognition accuracy. In one aspect, a method includes receiving voice queries, obtaining, for one or more of the voice queries, feedback information that references an action taken by a user that submitted the voice query after reviewing a result of the voice query, generating, for the one or more voice queries, a posterior recognition confidence measure that reflects a probability that the voice query was correctly recognized, wherein the posterior recognition confidence measure is generated based at least on the feedback information for the voice query, selecting a subset of the one or more voice queries based on the posterior recognition confidence measures, and adapting an acoustic model using the subset of the voice queries.

Abstract: In one implementation a computer-implemented method includes generating a group of telephone contacts for a first user, wherein the generating includes identifying a second user as a contact of the first user based upon a determination that the second user has at least a threshold email-based association with the first user; and adding the identified second user to the group of telephone contacts for the first user. The method further includes receiving a first request to connect a first telephone device associated with the first user to a second telephone device associated with the second user. The method also includes identifying a contact identifier of the second telephone device using the generated group of telephone contacts for the first user, and initiating a connection between the first telephone device and the second telephone device using the identified contact identifier.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for updating phonetic dictionaries. In one aspect, a method includes accessing a phonetic dictionary that identifies terms and one or more phonetic representations associated with each term, determining that a particular term that is identified in the phonetic dictionary is a spelling correction for another term that is identified in the phonetic dictionary, and storing, in the phonetic dictionary, one or more of the phonetic representations associated with the other term, with the particular term that is a spelling correction for the other term.

Abstract: Speech recognition systems may perform the following operations: receiving audio; recognizing the audio using language models for different languages to produce recognition candidates for the audio, where the recognition candidates are associated with corresponding recognition scores; identifying a candidate language for the audio; selecting a recognition candidate based on the recognition scores and the candidate language; and outputting data corresponding to the selected recognition candidate as a recognized version of the audio.

Abstract: Respective word frequencies may be determined from a corpus of utterance-to-text-string mappings that contain associations between audio utterances and a respective text string transcription of each audio utterance. Respective compressed word frequencies may be obtained based on the respective word frequencies such that the distribution of the respective compressed word frequencies has a lower variance than the distribution of the respective word frequencies. Sample utterance-to-text-string mappings may be selected from the corpus of utterance-to-text-string mappings based on the compressed word frequencies. An automatic speech recognition (ASR) system may be trained with the sample utterance-to-text-string mappings.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for pruning a language model are disclosed. The methods, systems, and apparatus include actions of selecting a candidate portion of the language model to evaluate for pruning, obtaining an entropy score representing information loss that would result from pruning the candidate portion of the language model, obtaining an acoustic score representing acoustic confusability of one or more words modeled by the candidate portion of the language model, and evaluating whether to prune the candidate portion of the language model using the entropy score and the acoustic score.

Abstract: Training data from a plurality of utterance-to-text-string mappings of an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system may be selected. Parameters of the ASR system that characterize the utterances and their respective mappings may be determined through application of a first acoustic model and a language model. A second acoustic model and the language model may be applied to the selected training data utterances to determine a second set of utterance-to-text-string mappings. The first set of utterance-to-text-string mappings may be compared to the second set of utterance-to-text-string mappings, and the parameters of the ASR system may be updated based on the comparison.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for discovery of problematic pronunciations for automatic speech recognition systems. One of the methods includes determining a frequency of occurrences of one or more n-grams in transcribed text and a frequency of occurrences of the n-grams in typed text and classifying a system pronunciation of a word included in the n-grams as correct or incorrect based on the frequencies. The n-grams may comprise one or more words and at least one of the words is classified as incorrect based on the frequencies. The frequencies of the specific n-grams may be determined across a domain using one or more n-grams that typically appear adjacent to the specific n-grams.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for determining pronunciations for particular terms. The methods, systems, and apparatus include actions of obtaining audio samples of speech corresponding to a particular term and obtaining candidate pronunciations for the particular term. Further actions include generating, for each candidate pronunciation for the particular term and audio sample of speech corresponding to the particular term, a score reflecting a level of similarity between of the candidate pronunciation and the audio sample. Additional actions include aggregating the scores for each candidate pronunciation and adding one or more candidate pronunciations for the particular term to a pronunciation lexicon based on the aggregated scores for the candidate pronunciations.

Abstract: A method of operating a voice-enabled business directory search system includes receiving category-business pairs, each category-business pair including a business category and a specific business, and establishing a data structure having nodes based on the category-business pairs. Each node of the data structure is associated with one or more business categories and a speech recognition language model for recognizing specific businesses associated with the one or more businesses categories.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for performing speech recognition using models that are based on where, within a building, a speaker makes an utterance are disclosed. The methods, systems, and apparatus include actions of receiving data corresponding to an utterance, and obtaining location indicia for an area within a building where the utterance was spoken. Further actions include selecting one or more models for speech recognition based on the location indicia, wherein each of the selected one or more models is associated with a weight based on the location indicia. Additionally, the actions include generating a composite model using the selected one or more models and the respective weights of the selected one or more models. And the actions also include generating a transcription of the utterance using the composite model.