Precise N-Gram Probabilities from Stochastic Context-Free Grammars

We present an algorithm for computing n-gram probabilities from stochastic context-free grammars, a procedure that can alleviate some of the standard problems associated with n-grams (estimation from sparse data, lack of linguistic structure, among others). The method operates via the computation of substring expectations, which in turn is accomplished by solving systems of linear equations derived from the grammar. The procedure is fully implemented and has proved viable and useful in practice.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1994
• Where: ACL
• Authors: Andreas Stolcke, Jonathan Segal
• Keywords: ACL 1994, ACL 2007, Linguistic Structure, N-gram Probabilities, Stochastic Context-free Grammars