7.4 HMM Sets

 

The previous sections have described how a single HMM definition can be specified. However, many HTK tools require complete model sets to be specified rather than just a single model.  When this is the case, the individual HMMs which belong to the set are listed in a file rather than being enumerated explicitly on the command line. Thus, for example, a typical invocation of the tool HEREST might be as follows

    HERest ... -H mf1 -H mf2 ... hlist

where each -H option names a macro file and hlist contains a list of HMM names, one per line. For example, it might contain

    ha
    hb
    hc

In a case such as this, the macro files would normally  contain definitions for the models ha, hb and hc, along with any lower level macro definitions that they might require.

 

As an illustration, Fig 7.9 and Fig 7.10 give examples of what the macro files mf1 and mf2 might contain. The first file contains definitions for three states and a transition matrix. The second file contains definitions for the three HMMs. In this example, each HMM shares the three states and the common transition matrix. A HMM set such as this is called a tied-state system.

The order in which macro files are listed on the command line and the order of definition within each file must ensure that all macro definitions are defined before they are referenced. Thus, macro files are typically organised such that all low level structures come first followed by states and transition matrices, with the actual HMM definitions coming last.

When the HMM list contains the name of a HMM for which no corresponding macro has been defined, then an attempt is made to open a file with the same name. This file is expected to contain a single definition corresponding to the required HMM. Thus, the general mechanism for loading a set of HMMs is as shown in Fig 7.11. In this example, the HMM list hlist contains the names of five HMMs of which only three have been predefined via the macro files. Hence, the remaining definitions are found in individual HMM definition files hd and he.

When a large number of HMMs must be loaded from individual files, it is common to store them in a specific directory. Most HTK tools allow this directory to be specified explicitly using a command line option. For example, in the command

    HERest -d hdir ... hlist ....

the definitions for the HMM listed in hlist will be searched for in the subdirectory hdir.

 

  After loading each HMM set, HMODEL marks it as belonging to one of the following categories (called the HSKind )

• PLAINHS
• SHAREDHS
• TIEDHS
• DISCRETEHS

Any HMM set containing discrete output distributions is assigned  to the DISCRETEHS  category (see section 7.6). If all mixture components are tied, then it is assigned to the TIEDHS category (see section 7.5). If it contains any shared states ( s macros) or Gaussians ( m macros) then it is SHAREDHS . Otherwise, it is PLAINHS. The category assigned to a HMM set determines which of several possible optimisations the various HTK tools can apply to it. As a check, the required kind of a HMM set can also be set via the configuration variable HMMSETKIND. For debugging purposes, this can also be used to re-categorise a SHAREDHS system as PLAINHS .

As shown in Figure 7.8, complete HMM definitions can be tied as well as their individual parameters. However, tying at the HMM level is defined in a different way. HMM lists have so far  been described as simply a list of model names. In fact, every HMM has two names: a logical name and a physical name. The logical name reflects the rôle of the model and the physical name is used to identify the definition on disk. By default, the logical and physical names are identical. HMM tying is implemented by letting several logically distinct HMMs share the same physical definition. This is done by giving an explicit physical name immediately after the logical name in a HMM list .

 

For example, in the HMM list shown in Fig 7.12, the logical HMMs two, too and to are tied and share the same physical HMM definition tuw. The HMMs one and won are also tied but in this case won shares one's definition. There is, however, no subtle distinction here. The two different cases are given just to emphasise that the names used for the logical and physical HMMs can be the same or different, as is convenient. Finally, in this example, the models three and four are untied.

 

This mechanism is implemented internally by creating a l macro definition for every HMM in the HMM list. If an explicit physical HMM is also given in the list, then the logical HMM is linked to that macro, otherwise a h macro is created with the same name as the l macro. Notice that this is one case where the ``define before use'' rule is relaxed. If an undefined h is encountered then a dummy place-holder is created for it and, as explained above, HMODEL subsequently tries to find a HMM definition file of the same name.

Finally it should be noted that in earlier versions of HTK, there were no HMM macros. However, HMM definitions could be listed in a single   master macro file or MMF . Each HMM definition began with its name written as a quoted string and ended with a period written on its own (just like master label files), and the first line of an MMF contained the string #!MMF!#. In HTK V2.0 ,\ the use of MMFs has been subsumed within the general macro definition facility using the h type. However, for compatibility, the older MMF style of file can still be read by all HTK tools.