Patent ID: 7383185

Claim:
A method of removing an empty string term from an automaton A having a set of states “p” and a set of states “q”, the method comprising: inputting to a device a representation of the automaton A, which further represents a plurality of hypotheses with associated weights; computing an ε-closure for each one of the set of states “p” of the automaton A; producing a modified representation of automaton A by modifying outgoing transitions of each one of the set of states “p”, the modifying further comprising: removing each of the outgoing transitions labeled with an empty string; and adding to each of the outgoing transitions leaving ones of the set of states “p” a non-empty-string transition, wherein each of the set of states “q” is left with its weights pre-{circle around (x)}-multiplied by an ε-distance from a corresponding one of the set of states “p” to a respective one of the set of states “q” in the automaton A; and applying the modified automation A to process information in the field of at least one of: speech recognition, speech synthesis and text processing.