Spoken Question Answering Systems Overview

This technical report discusses the challenges and methodologies associated with spoken question answering (QA) systems. It begins by defining QA and contrasting it with traditional information retrieval systems, highlighting the importance of understanding both the questions and the documents from which answers are extracted. The report outlines specific considerations for handling speech data, including the structural differences between spoken and written language, such as the absence of punctuation and the presence of disfluencies. It also emphasizes the need for robust algorithms capable of processing errors introduced by automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems. The document further details various QA evaluation campaigns, particularly those focused on spoken data, and compares different approaches and systems used in the field. The report concludes with a discussion on the future perspectives of spoken QA, emphasizing the need for continued research to address the unique challenges presented by spoken language.