If the target of ASR would be document retrieval, it would make sense to apply the same (easy) transformations before calculating WER. Think: function word remo

If the target of ASR would be document retrieval, it would make sense to apply the same (easy) transformations before calculating WER. Think: function word removal, unsplitting remaining contractions, and stemming. That would take out some of the problems, while staying true to the target. Aren't there any old-school linguists working on this?