javax.speech
Class Word

Object
  Word

public class Word
extends Object

Provides a standard representation of words used by speech Engines. A Word object provides the following information:

• Written-form text: String that can be used to present the Word visually.
• Spoken-form text: String that indicates how the Word is spoken.
• Pronunciation: a String of phonetic characters indicating how the Word is spoken.
• Audio: the actual audio signal for the Word.
• Grammatical categories: flags indicating grammatical "part-of-speech" information.
• SpeechLocale: information regarding the intended language for this Word.

The written-form text must be specified. The other properties are optional and are hints to the speech Engine.

Typically, one of the optional properties is specified. If more than one is specified, they are considered in the following precedence order from most to least specific:

1. Audio
2. Pronunciation
3. Spoken-form text
4. Written-form text

Each of these are considered in the context of the SpeechLocale.

The Word class allows the specification of multiple pronunciations and multiple grammatical categories. If supplied, pronunciations must be appropriate to each category. Otherwise, separate Word objects should be created. For example, consider the different verb and noun pronunciations in "they will record a record".

Words are added through the VocabularyManager. In some applications, the pronunciation may be derived through acoustics and the written-form text may be less useful than the pronunciation. In this case, the Word may be created with the ACOUSTIC category.

See Also:

VocabularyManager, getVocabularyManager, ACOUSTIC

Field Summary

static long	ABBREVIATION Grammatical category of Word is an abbreviation or acronym.
static long	ACOUSTIC Grammatical category of Word is an acoustically-derived pronunciation.
static long	ADJECTIVE Grammatical category of Word is adjective.
static long	ADVERB Grammatical category of Word is adverb.
static long	AUXILIARY Grammatical category of Word is auxiliary.
static long	CARDINAL Grammatical category of Word is cardinal.
static long	CONJUNCTION Grammatical category of Word is conjunction.
static long	CONTRACTION Grammatical category of Word is contraction.
static long	DETERMINER Grammatical category of Word is determiner.
static long	DONT_CARE Grammatical category of Word doesn't matter.
static long	NOUN Grammatical category of Word is noun.
static long	OTHER Grammatical category of Word not otherwise specified.
static long	PREPOSITION Grammatical category of Word is preposition.
static long	PRONOUN Grammatical category of word is pronoun.
static long	PROPER_ADJECTIVE Grammatical category of Word is proper adjective.
static long	PROPER_NOUN Grammatical category of Word is proper noun.
static long	UNKNOWN Grammatical category of Word is unknown.
static long	VERB Grammatical category of Word is verb.

Constructor Summary

Word(String text, String[] pronunciations, String spokenForm, AudioSegment audioSegment, long categories)
Constructs a Word object.

Word(String text, String[] pronunciations, String spokenForm, AudioSegment audioSegment, long categories, SpeechLocale locale)
Constructs a Word object with SpeechLocale information.

Method Summary

AudioSegment	getAudioSegment() Gets the AudioSegment for this Word.
long	getCategories() Gets the categories of this Word.
String[]	getPronunciations() Gets the pronunciations of this Word.
SpeechLocale	getSpeechLocale() Gets the Word SpeechLocale.
String	getSpokenForm() Gets the spoken-form text of this Word.
String	getText() Gets the written-form text of this Word.

Methods inherited from class Object

equals, getClass, hashCode, notify, notifyAll, toString, wait, wait, wait

Field Detail

UNKNOWN

public static final long UNKNOWN

Grammatical category of Word is unknown. This value implies that no other category flag is set.

See Also:

getCategories, Constant Field Values

DONT_CARE

public static final long DONT_CARE

Grammatical category of Word doesn't matter.

See Also:

getCategories, Constant Field Values

OTHER

public static final long OTHER

Grammatical category of Word not otherwise specified.

See Also:

getCategories, Constant Field Values

NOUN

public static final long NOUN

Grammatical category of Word is noun. English examples: "car", "house", "elephant".

See Also:

getCategories, Constant Field Values

PROPER_NOUN

public static final long PROPER_NOUN

Grammatical category of Word is proper noun. English examples: "Yellowstone", "Singapore".

See Also:

getCategories, Constant Field Values

PRONOUN

public static final long PRONOUN

Grammatical category of word is pronoun. English examples: "me", "I", "they".

See Also:

getCategories, Constant Field Values

VERB

public static final long VERB

Grammatical category of Word is verb. English examples: "run", "debug", "integrate".

See Also:

getCategories, Constant Field Values

ADVERB

public static final long ADVERB

Grammatical category of Word is adverb. English examples: "slowly", "loudly", "barely", "very", "never".

See Also:

getCategories, Constant Field Values

ADJECTIVE

public static final long ADJECTIVE

Grammatical category of Word is adjective. English examples: "red", "mighty", "very", "first", "eighteenth".

See Also:

getCategories, Constant Field Values

PROPER_ADJECTIVE

public static final long PROPER_ADJECTIVE

Grammatical category of Word is proper adjective. English examples: "British", "Brazilian".

See Also:

getCategories, Constant Field Values

AUXILIARY

public static final long AUXILIARY

Grammatical category of Word is auxiliary. English examples: "have", "do", "is", "shall", "must", "cannot".

See Also:

getCategories, Constant Field Values

DETERMINER

public static final long DETERMINER

Grammatical category of Word is determiner. English examples: "the", "a", "some", "many", "his", "her".

See Also:

getCategories, Constant Field Values

CARDINAL

public static final long CARDINAL

Grammatical category of Word is cardinal. English examples: "one", "two", "million".

See Also:

getCategories, Constant Field Values

CONJUNCTION

public static final long CONJUNCTION

Grammatical category of Word is conjunction. English examples: "and", "or", "since", "if".

See Also:

getCategories, Constant Field Values

PREPOSITION

public static final long PREPOSITION

Grammatical category of Word is preposition. English examples: "of", "for".

See Also:

getCategories, Constant Field Values

CONTRACTION

public static final long CONTRACTION

Grammatical category of Word is contraction. English examples: "don't", "can't".

See Also:

getCategories, Constant Field Values

ABBREVIATION

public static final long ABBREVIATION

Grammatical category of Word is an abbreviation or acronym. English examples: "Mr.", "USA".

See Also:

getCategories, Constant Field Values

ACOUSTIC

public static final long ACOUSTIC

Grammatical category of Word is an acoustically-derived pronunciation. This is not a true grammatical category, but provides information useful for deciding how to use this Word.

In this case, the pronunciation is more useful than the written-form text. For example, the written-form text might be "<NameDialerEntry3>", but the pronunciation might represent "Bill Smith".

See Also:

getText, getPronunciations, getAudioSegment, getCategories, Constant Field Values

Constructor Detail

Word

public Word(String text,
            String[] pronunciations,
            String spokenForm,
            AudioSegment audioSegment,
            long categories)
     throws IllegalArgumentException

Constructs a Word object. This constructor uses null for SpeechLocale.

The Word constructor with the SpeechLocale parameter provides more details.

Parameters:

text - the written-form text of the Word

pronunciations - a set of pronunciations for the Word

spokenForm - the spoken-form text of the Word

audioSegment - a recorded AudioSegment for the Word

categories - grammatical categories for this Word

Throws:

IllegalArgumentException - if the written-form text is null

See Also:

Word(String, String[], String, AudioSegment, long, SpeechLocale)

Word

public Word(String text,
            String[] pronunciations,
            String spokenForm,
            AudioSegment audioSegment,
            long categories,
            SpeechLocale locale)
     throws IllegalArgumentException

Constructs a Word object with SpeechLocale information. This information can improve the performance of speech Engines.

The written-form text represents the Word visually and must be specified. All other values may be null (or UNKNOWN for categories).

The locale parameter specifies the SpeechLocale of this Word. It may be null or partially specified. See getSpeechLocale for details.

The preamble defines a precedence order for Engines using the different kinds of information.

Parameters:

text - the written-form text of the Word

pronunciations - a set of pronunciations for the Word

spokenForm - the spoken-form text of the Word

audioSegment - a recorded AudioSegment for the Word

categories - grammatical categories for this Word

locale - the SpeechLocale of this Word

Throws:

IllegalArgumentException - if the written-form text is null

See Also:

getText, getPronunciations, getSpokenForm, getAudioSegment, getCategories, getSpeechLocale, UNKNOWN

Method Detail

getAudioSegment

public AudioSegment getAudioSegment()

Gets the AudioSegment for this Word. The value may be null if it is not available.

Audio may be available for the Word in speaker dependent systems or when the pronunciation is derived from audio.

The audio may be used as feedback to the user.

Returns:

the AudioSegment for this Word

See Also:

ACOUSTIC

getCategories

public long getCategories()

Gets the categories of this Word. Value may be UNKNOWN or an OR'ed set of the categories defined by this class. For example, a Word may be classified as both a noun and a verb:

 Word w = new Word("running", null, null, null, Word.NOUN | Word.VERB);
 

The category information is a guide to the Word's grammatical role. Engines can use this information to improve performance in areas such as accuracy, phrasing and accenting.

Returns:

the set of categories for this Word

See Also:

ABBREVIATION, ACOUSTIC, ADJECTIVE, ADVERB, AUXILIARY, CARDINAL, CONJUNCTION, CONTRACTION, DETERMINER, DONT_CARE, NOUN, OTHER, PREPOSITION, PRONOUN, PROPER_ADJECTIVE, PROPER_NOUN, VERB, UNKNOWN

getPronunciations

public String[] getPronunciations()

Gets the pronunciations of this Word. The pronunciation Strings use the Unicode IPA subset. Returns null if no pronunciations were specified.

Speech Engines should handle most words of the language they support. However, providing pronunciations with Words can provide missing information and improve Engine performance in cases such as domain-specific or foreign words.

Returns:

the pronunciations of this word

See Also:

ACOUSTIC

getSpokenForm

public String getSpokenForm()

Gets the spoken-form text of this Word. Returns null if the spoken-form text is not defined.

The spoken-form text of a Word is useful for mapping the written-form text to words that are likely to be handled by a speech Engine. The following examples show corresponding written- and spoken-form text:

• "JavaSoft" as "java soft"
• "toString" as "to string"
• "IEEE" as "I triple E"

Returns:

the spoken-form text of this Word

See Also:

getText

getText

public String getText()

Gets the written-form text of this Word. The written-form text represents the Word visually.

Returns:

the written-form text of this Word

See Also:

getSpokenForm

getSpeechLocale

public SpeechLocale getSpeechLocale()

Gets the Word SpeechLocale. The SpeechLocale includes the language, country, and variant (for the language).

If partially specified, an Engine uses the most complete match from among possible Word choices. The SpeechLocale may be null to more conveniently support mono-lingual Engines.

Returns:

the SpeechLocale for this Word