varikn 1.2.0b3

VariKN language modeling toolkit

VariKN language modeling toolkit provides tools for training n-gram language models. Amongst the supported methods are:

• Absolute discounting

• Kneser-Ney smoothing

• Revised Kneser pruning

• Kneser-Ney growing

The descriptions of Revised Kneser pruning and Kneser-Ney growing can be found in the paper Vesa Siivola, Teemu Hirsimäki and Sami Virpioja, “On Growing and Pruning Kneser-Ney Smoothed N-Gram Models”, IEEE Transactions on Speech, Audio and Language Processing, 15(5):1617-1624, 2007 (available at https://sites.google.com/site/vesassiivola/publications/TASLP2007.pdf).

The package provides a accurate pruning for Kneser-Ney smoothed models. Also, it is possible to train a very high-order n-gram models with the growing algorithm. The models can be output to arpa lm format, which is compatible with most common other tools in the field. You can look at the paper Vesa Siivola, Mathias Creutz and Mikko Kurimo: “Morfessor and VariKN machine learning tools for speech and language technology”, Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (INTERSPEECH’07), 2007 (available at https://sites.google.com/site/vesassiivola/publications/is2007less.pdf) for guidelines on typical use.

For help on installing the toolkit, read the file named “install”.

For help on using the built commands, read the file named “commands.html”

If it looks like there is interest in using the toolkit but the documentation is inadequate, let me know the main sticking points and I’ll try to do something about it. If you are interested in a well supported toolkit that provides a wide range of functionality, you might want to look at the srilm toolkit (http://www-speech.sri.com/projects/srilm/).