Regional finite-state error repair

Abstract

[Abstract] We describe an algorithm to deal with error repair over finite-state architectures. Such a technique is of interest in spelling correction as well as approximate string matching in a variety of applications related to natural language processing, such as information extraction/recovery or answer searching, where error-tolerant recognition allows misspelled input words to be integrated in the computational process. Our proposal relies on a regional least-cost repair strategy, dynamically gathering all relevant information in the context of the error location. The system guarantees asymptotic equivalence with global repair strategies.