Speech-based Dictionary Application

Abstract

For over two decades, speech has been used to interact with computers. During this same period, a number of speech applications have been implemented in many research and commercial projects for various purposes. One educational purpose has been to give a more natural way to communicate between learners and computer-based learning materials. In the field of language learning, previous research on using speech interfaces has mostly been concentrated on the development of speech-based translation systems providing bilingual or multilingual translations in the form of spoken dialogue phrases or sentences within limited domains and the development of computer-aided language learning systems. However, speech-based dictionary applications in the sense of giving a word definition have not much been studied. This is despite the fact that dictionaries are apparently beneficial for supporting language learning through providing various resources such as a list of alphabetical words with their meanings which can also be described in other languages, grammars, pronunciations, and example phrases or sentences. Since speech technologies have increasingly been developed and successfully deployed in many applications, this motivates the study of applying the same technologies to dictionaries. This thesis studies an approach to constructing a speech-based dictionary application connected to the speech technologies currently available. The survey of previous and current research works is presented. The gathered speech technologies are described and a design of the application using some available development environments and languages is proposed. Also, the findings on the implementation of a speech-based dictionary prototype system are explained.

Key words and terms: Dictionary, speech application, speech technology.