Patent ID: 7437291

Claim:
A method of correctly determining content or meaning from a partial spoken utterance in an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system, said method comprising the steps of: receiving, by a ASR recognition unit, an input signal representing a speech utterance or word and transcribing said input signal into a representative electronic textual form; interpreting, by a ASR interpreter unit, whether said representative electronic textual form is either a positive or a negative match to a list of automated options by matching said representative electronic textual form with a grammar or semantic database representing said list of automated options, wherein if said ASR interpreter unit results in said positive match proceeding to a next input signal and if said ASR interpreter unit results in said negative match rejecting and submitting said representative electronic textual form as representing said partial utterance; processing, by a linguistic filtering unit, said rejected representative electronic textual form to derive a correct match between said rejected representative electronic textual form and said grammar or semantic database; and determining by said linguistic filtering unit, if said rejected representative electronic textual form is said speech utterance or word by a phonological, morphological, syntactic and/or semantic process(es), wherein each process(es) results in a suggested form of speech utterance or word for each of the process(es); assigning a score for each suggested form of speech utterance or word and ordering said suggested form of speech utterance or word according to a cumulative total score; and comparing each said suggested form of speech utterance with existing words in said grammar or semantic database by a context-relevant matching process; and hypothesizing possible forms of said ordered rejected text based on said comparing.