Spontaneous Speech

(photo quoted from Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation )
Introduction
Spontaneous speech requires no special training, efficient, minimal cognitive load and wealth of information at multiple levels. There are some features such as variable speaking rate, greater use of short words and function words, and a tendency towards more coarticulation and generally less precise coarticulation.

Challenge
1. Recovering hidden punctuation
Punctuation is everything in written language other than the actual letters, including punctuation marks and inter-word spaces.
2. Coping with disfluences
Disfluency: Lack of skilfulness in speaking or writing, such as filled pauses, repetitions, repairs, false starts

3. Allowing for realistic turn-taking
Listeners project the end of a current speaker’s turn using syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and prosody.
4. Hearing more than words
Distinguish emotion and do user state detection. Especially, it’s important for certain dialog system application