Language modeling for what-with-where on GOOG-411

Abstract

This paper describes the language modelling (LM) architectures and recognition experiments that enabled support of 'what-with-where' queries on GOOG-411. First the paper compares accuracy trade-offs between a single national business LM for business queries and using many small models adapted for particular cities. Experimental evaluations show that both approaches lead to comparable overall accuracy. Differences in the distributions of errors also lead to improvements from a simple combination. The researchers then optimize variants of the national business LM in the context of combined business and location queries from the web, and finally evaluate these models on a recognition test from the recently fielded ’what-with-where’ system.