Patent ID: 7447627

Claim:
A method for identifying at least two component words in a compound word, comprising: receiving the compound word; searching a lexicon for the compound word, the lexicon including word entries that are annotated with associated segmentation information indicative of whether the associated word can form a component of a compound word; and identifying the component words for the compound word based on the entries contained in the lexicon including the annotated word entries by matching a first word portion of the compound word with a first entry in the lexicon, and matching a second word portion of the compound word with a second entry in the lexicon wherein matching the first word portion further comprises: searching the lexicon for a word entry that matches the first word portion; if a match is found; analyzing the second word portion for matches with word entries in the lexicon; if a match is found for the second word portion; generating a hypotheses and adding the hypothesis to a list of hypotheses, wherein the hypothesis is a combination of the first word portion and the second word portion; prior to adding the hypothesis to the list of hypotheses, checking if the matching word entry in the lexicon for the second word portion or a last portion of the second portion includes an anti-seg indication as the segmentation information indicating that the associated word cannot be a final component of a compound word; and adding the hypothesis to the list of hypotheses only if the entry does not include the anti-seg indication.