Artículo

Exact and Approximate Prefix Search under Access Locality Requirements for Morphological Analysis and Spelling Correction

La Búsqueda Exacta y Aproximada de Prefijos Bajo los Requerimientos del Acceso Local, para el Análisis Morfológico y Corrección de Ortografía

Alexander Gelbukh

Centro de Investigación en Computación–IPN Av. Juan de Dios Bátiz s/n esq. Miguel Othón de Mendizabal, Unidad Porfesional Adolfo López Mateos, Col. Sn Pedro Zacatenco Del. Gustavo A. Madero, México D.F. C.P. 07738 E–mail: gelbukh@cic.ipn.mx , gelbukh@gelbukh.com

Article received on December 12, 2000
Accepted on March 18, 2003

Abstract

A data structure useful for prefix search in a very large dictionary with an unlimited query string is discussed. This problem is important for morphological analysis of inflective languages, including particularly difficult cases such as German word concatenation or Japanese writing system that does not use spaces; similar tasks arise in DNA computing. The data structure is optimized for locality of access: to find all necessary records, access to only one block (page) of the main data storage is guaranteed, which significantly improves performance. To illustrate its usefulness, the algorithms of exact and approximate search are described, with application to morphological analysis and spelling correction. The algorithms for building, exporting, and updating the data structure are explained.

Keywords: prefix search, approximate prefix search, approximate string matching, morphological analysis, spelling correction, natural language processing, DNA computing.

Resumen

Se presenta una estructura de datos que es útil para la búsqueda de prefijos en un diccionario muy grande con una petición de entrada no limitada. Este problema es importante para el análisis morfológico de los lenguajes fiexivos, incluyendo los casos particularmente difíciles tales como encadenamiento de palabras en el alemán o el sistema de la escritura japonés que no utiliza espacios; las tareas similares se presentan en el procesamiento computational de ADN. La estructura de datos es optimizada para el acceso local: para encontrar todos los registros necesarios, se garantiza el acceso a sólo un bloque (página) del dispositivo principal de almacenamiento de datos, lo que significadamente mejora el rendimiento. Para ilustrar su utilidad, se describen los algoritmos de la búsqueda exacta y aproximada, aplicados al análisis morfológico y la corrección de ortografía. Se explican los algoritmos para la construcción, exportación y actualización de la estructura de datos.

Palabras clave: búsqueda de prefijos, búsqueda aproximada de prefijos, comparación aproximada de cadenas, análisis morfológico, corrección de ortografía, procesamiento de lenguaje natural, computación de ADN.

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