US Patent 7493251 Using source-channel models for word segmentation

A method and apparatus for segmenting text is provided that identifies a sequence of entity types from a sequence of characters and thereby identifies a segmentation for the sequence of characters. Under the invention, the sequence of entity types is identified using probabilistic models that describe the likelihood of a sequence of entities and the likelihood of sequences of characters given particular entities. Under one aspect of the invention, organization name entities are identified from a first sequence of identified entities to form a final sequence of identified entities.