[rec.humor] ambiguous speech

saal@sfsup.UUCP (S.Saal) (01/30/88)

I don't know if speech recognition is still considered a part of
AI, but I thought these two groups would be the most appropriate
for this question.

One of the difficulties of speech recognition is to have the
computer understand whether the statement "makes sense."  this is
something (most) humans do automatically.  When the sentence
doesn't make sense we slow down our assimilation rate or, if
necessary, ask the speaker to repeat.  computers can't/don't do
that.  The classic example is:

"It's hard to wreck a nice beach." vs
"Its hard to recognize speech."

(If you don't see the difficulty, say each one out loud.)

What I am looking for is more examples of these sentence pairs.

Here is another example - one that a human listener would be able
to discern easily, though I have my doubts about the computer.

"She bought her son dresses for $5."  vs
"She bought her sundresses for $5."

Please send all sentence pairs to me directly (via email) instead
of posting them.

rec.humor folks, no need to re-start the discussion on
misunderstood song lyrics.

Thanks.
-- 
Sam Saal         ..!attunix!saal
It's a retelling of the campaigns of Julius Ceasar, with the addition
of aircraft. ...  I call it "Veni, Vidi, Vici Through Air Power."
	from "God Save the Mark"