Patent ID: 7693715
Filing Date: 2010-04-06
Classification: G10L

Abstract:
1. A method of segmenting words into component parts, the method comprising: a processor determining a mutual information score for a pair of graphoneme units, comprising a first graphoneme unit and a second graphoneme unit, using the probability of the first graphoneme unit appearing immediately after the second graphoneme unit, the unigram probability of the first graphoneme unit and the unigram probability of the second graphoneme unit, each graphoneme unit comprising at least one letter in the spelling of a word; a processor using the mutual information score to combine the first and second graphoneme units into a larger graphoneme unit; and in a dictionary comprising segmentations of words into sequences of graphoneme units, a processor replacing the first and second graphoneme units with the larger graphoneme unit in each sequence of graphoneme units in which the first graphoneme unit appears immediately after the second graphoneme unit.