Filled-pauses procedure

In section 4.3, we described a procedure to counter $/pause/$ in speech data. This technique can also be used for the procedure for dealing with filled-pauses in spontaneous speech. We therefore propose two techniques for this procedure.

1. Filled-pauses Skip

   Filled-pauses are already known as phone strings (e.g. ``well'' is /W/ /EH/ /L/ ), and recorded in a word dictionary. And this method skips filled-pauses like a $/pause/$. Additionally, we use the unigram probabilities of filled-pauses as the penalty.

   For example, let's assume that the speech data is as follows.

   `` Do you already have well a registration form ? ''

   In this case, ``well'' is a filled-pause. The trigram probabilities are calculated as follows.

   $P($``do'' $) \times P ($``you''$\vert$``do''$) \times P ($``already''$\vert$``do''$,$``you''$) \times P ($``well''$) \times P ($``have''$\vert$``you''$,$``already''$) \times P ($``a''$\vert$``already''$,$``have''$) \times P ($``registration''$\vert$``have''$,$``a''$).$

   In this equation, $P($``well''$)$ is the penalty and $P($``have''$\vert$``you''$,$``already''$)$ means to skip filled-pauses.

2. Phone-strings Skip

   As filled-pauses are considered to be sequences of phones, this technique skips phones strings as filled-pauses, we also use a penalty for the phone trigram probabilities. This technique is also used for the procedure for dealing with hesitations, retractions and out-of-vocabulary words .

   For example, let's assume the speech data is as follows.

   $\lq\lq Do\ you\ already\ have\ well\ a\ registration\ form ?''$ $( /D/UW/\ \ /Y/UW/\ \ /AO/L/R/EH/D/IY/\ \ /H/AE/V/\ \ \\ /W/EH/L/\ \ /AH/\ \ /R/EH/J/IH/S/T/R/EY/SH/UN/\ \ \\ /F/OH/M?)$

   The trigram probabilities are calculated as follows.

   $P($``do'' $) \times P ($``you''$\vert$``do''$) \times P ($``already''$\vert$``do''$,$``you'' $) \times P( /W/ \vert /E/,/V/ ) \times P( /EH/ \vert /V/,/W/ ) \times P( /L/ \vert /W/,/EH/ ) \times P($``have''$\vert$``you''$,$``already''$) \times P ($``a''$\vert$``already''$,$``have''$) \times P ($``registration''$\vert$``have''$,$``a''$).$

   In this equation, $P( /W/ \vert /E/,/V/ )$ , $P( /EH/ \vert /V/,/W/ )$ and $P( /L/ \vert /W/,/EH/ )$ mean the penalty and $P($``have''$\vert$``you''$,$``already''$)$ means to skip phone strings.