Patent Document ID: 7831425
Application ID: 11300735

Base Claim:
1. A computer-implemented method of indexing a speech lattice for search of audio corresponding to the speech lattice, the method comprising: using a processor to identify at least two speech recognition hypotheses for a particular word which have time ranges satisfying a criteria, each of the at least two speech recognition hypotheses for the particular word having an associated start time, an associated end time, and an associated probability, at least some of the at least two speech recognition hypotheses having different associated start and/or associated finish times from each other, and satisfying the criteria requires that the at least two speech recognition hypotheses for the particular word have start times that are within a predetermined range of each other, and end times that are within a predetermined range of each other; using the processor to merge the at least two speech recognition hypotheses, at least some of which having different associated start and/or associated finish times from each other, to generate a merged speech recognition hypothesis for the particular word such that start and end times for the merged speech recognition hypothesis are the same as start and end times for a best of the at least two speech recognition hypotheses, wherein merging the at least two speech recognition hypotheses to generate the merged speech recognition hypothesis for the particular word further comprises combining the associated probabilities of the at least two speech recognition hypotheses for the particular word which have time ranges satisfying the criteria; and storing an index entry to represent the merged speech recognition hypothesis for the particular word.

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Claim 2:
2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein storing the index entry to represent the merged speech recognition hypothesis for the particular word further comprises encoding the merged speech recognition hypothesis into an integer value represented by a predetermined number of bits, a first plurality of the predetermined number of bits representing a time range for the merged speech recognition hypothesis, a second plurality of the predetermined number of bits representing a quantized time duration and a probability of the merged speech recognition hypothesis.