If we’re assuming human level AI, maybe and not even then. Nonnative English speakers from languages without a singular/plural distinction often make use singulars where a plural is called for.

Domain knowledge around the intent (making a shopping list) and around language conventions helps a lot, not only for NLU, but also for NLS.

But even without a huge NLU dictionary, a simple MC or CRF segmentation model would work. As said earlier, almost no one says., “Add peanut to the shopping list.” They say, “Add peanuts”, of if they’re very atypical, “Add a peanut”. A bare “peanut” is simply unlikely.

I think the catch is that human detection of pauses is far more fraught with difficulty than you'd imagine. Overly emphasized pauses are easy to discern, but quite a lot of speech pulls words far closer together than you would think. And this is just in english. Not all languages work with emphasis syllables and such.

>If I were to say 'peanut' <pause> 'butter' my interlocutor would probably interrupt me

I'm on the parent's side on this. "Peanut butter" is such a common item that if someone were to pause in between the words I would assume they just got distracted for some reason. In the context of a shopping list, "peanut" singular just doesn't make sense.

A better example would be something like "yogurt ice cream" which is technically incorrect but it's still something people might say. In that case, I'd expect a shorter pause than in the case of yogurt, ice cream. However, if you were dictating a list to me I'd probably ask for confirmation in either case because there's enough ambiguity.

I agree. When parsing speech, we humans listen for many cues all at once. Spoken language even has intentional redundancy so we can identify and disregard inconsistent cues. For example, a child or foreign speaker might replace "peanut" with "peanuts" and most people would still have no problem understanding "peanuts butter" as long as the rest of the cues are consistent.

They are both signals. But the prior probability is more important in this case because it is so much more common to say "peanut butter" than "peanut, butter". In other cases the pause might be a more important signal.

yeah, but which way? `Add custard powdered sugar to my shopping list` is is powdered custard, or powdered sugar?

Assuming most cultures have "coffee cream" in their common vernacular seems risky. I've never heard of it.