Sony ICD-R100VTP - Manual (Page 16)

C H A P T E R 2 Using Dragon NaturallySpeaking Successfully
Dragon NaturallySpeaking User’s Guide 10
How Dragon NaturallySpeaking
works
When you talk into the microphone, Dragon NaturallySpeaking doesn’t
hear words or phrases. The computer hears your speech as a continuous
stream of sounds. From this stream, Dragon NaturallySpeaking picks out
common sound patterns, known as phonemes.
To match these sound patterns to words, Dragon NaturallySpeaking
relies on two large sources of data: acoustic data and language data.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking uses acoustic data about the sound patterns
that make up different words to choose the words that most closely
match what it heard. Since no two people sound exactly alike, Dragon
NaturallySpeaking does a much better job of matching sounds to words
when it knows something about your pronunciation. When you first
trained the program, you provided acoustic data on top of what Dragon
NaturallySpeaking already knows about the sounds of English.
Sometimes it’s not possible for Dragon NaturallySpeaking to choose the
correct word based on sound alone. Consider these two phrases: “pizza
delivery boy” and “Pete’s a delivery boy.” When spoken, they sound
almost exactly alike. How would Dragon NaturallySpeaking know which
to choose?
Dragon NaturallySpeaking uses language data about the context and
frequency of word use to determine which words were most likely
spoken. The phrase “pizza delivery boy” is more common than “Pete’s a
delivery boy,” so the program would favor this phrase over the other.
Since people write differently, it helps if Dragon NaturallySpeaking
knows something about the frequency with which you use different
words. When you Add Words From Documents, run Vocabulary
Builder
™ , or make corrections to your dictation, you’re providing the
program with language data about how often you use different words.
Knowing that Dragon NaturallySpeaking uses acoustic data and
language data to recognize your speech can help you know what to do to
make the program work better.
UG5.bk Page 10 Friday, August 4, 2000 2:26 PM