The MERL SpokenQuery information retrieval system a system for retrieving pertinent documents from a spoken query

This paper describes some key concepts developed and used in the design of a spoken-query based information retrieval system developed at the Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL). Innovations in the system include automatic inclusion of signature terms of documents in the recognizer's vocabulary, the use of uncertainty vectors to represent spoken queries, and a method of indexing that accommodates the usage of uncertainty vectors. This paper describes these techniques and includes experimental results that demonstrate their effectiveness.