SpeechActs: a spoken-language framework

SpeechActs is a prototype testbed for developing spoken natural language applications. In developing SpeechActs, our primary goal was to enable software developers without special expertise in speech or natural language to create effective conversational speech applications-that is, applications with which users can speak naturally, as if they were conversing with a personal assistant. We also wanted SpeechActs applications to work with one another without requiring that each have specific knowledge of other applications running in the same suite. A discourse management component is necessary to embody the information that allows such a natural conversational flow. Because technology changes so rapidly, we also did not want to tie developers to specific speech recognizers or synthesizers. We wanted them to be able to use these speech technologies as plug-in components.