SPOKEN LANGUAGE SYSTEMS - BEYOND PROMPT AND RESPONSE

Spoken language systems allow users to interact with computers by spea king to them. This paper focuses on the most advanced systems, which s eek to allow as natural a style of interaction as possible. Specifical ly this means the rise of continuous speech recognition - natural lang uage understanding to interpret the utterance, and an intelligent dial ogue manager which allows a flexible style of 'conversation' between c omputer and user. This paper discusses the architecture of spoken lang uage systems and the components of which they are made, and describes both a variety of possible approaches and the particular design decisi ons made in some systems developed at BT Laboratories. Three spoken la nguage systems in the course of development are described - a multimod al interface to the BT Business Catalogue, an e-mail secretory which c an be consulted over the telephone network, and a multimodal system to allow selection of films in the interactive TV environment.